Samsung to pay out $303M for memory patent infringement:
Samsung Electronics has been stung for more than $303 million in a patent infringement case brought by US memory company Netlist.
Netlist, headquartered in Irvine, California, styles itself as a provider of high-performance modular memory subsystems. The company initially filed a complaint that Samsung had infringed on three of its patents, later amended to six [PDF]. Following a six-day trial, the jury found for Netlist in five of these and awarded a total of $303,150,000 in damages.
[...] The patents appear to apply to various aspects of DDR memory modules. According to reports, Samsung's representatives had argued that Netlist's patents were invalid because they were already covered by existing technology and that its own memory chips did not function in the same way as described by the patents, but this clearly did not sway the jurors.
[...] The company states that Samsung and Netlist were initially partners under a 2015 Joint Development and License Agreement (JDLA), which granted Samsung a five-year paid-up license to Netlist's patents.
[...] Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung was to supply Netlist certain memory products at competitive prices, but Netlist claimed Samsung repeatedly failed to honor these promises. As a result, Netlist claims, it terminated the JDLA on July 15, 2020.
Netlist alleged in its court filing that Samsung has continued to make and sell memory products "with materially the same structures" as those referenced in the patents, despite the termination of the agreement.
[...] Netlist chief executive CK Hong said in a statement that the company was pleased with the case. He claimed the verdict "left no doubt" that Samsung had wilfully infringed Netlist patents, and is "currently using Netlist technology without a license" on many of its strategic product lines.
Hong also claimed that it was an example of the "brazen free ride" carried out by industry giants against intellectual property belonging to small innovators.
"We hope this case serves as a reminder of this problem to policymakers as well as a wakeup call to those in the memory industry that are using our IP without permission," he said.
[...] Netlist is also understood to have other cases pending against Micron and Google. Those against Micron are said to involve infringement of many of the same patents that were involved in the Samsung case.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday May 05, @02:11PM (1 child)
Netlist is a real company, not the usual NPE (patent troll).
The 054 patent was filed in mid 2021, after Netlist terminated its agreement with Samsung in mid-2020, which seems a bit fishy, they were in a partnership with Samsung, ended the partnership, and then a year later filed a retroactive patent on the stuff they'd been doing and sued Samsung for infringing it?
Like probably 90% of all the other tech patents the USPTO rubber-stamps, a lot of what's in these is just patenting the bleedin' obvious. Unfortunately, as Samsung has found out, that's not a defence in US patent law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05, @04:52PM
In the US (and some other countries), you are allowed to submit a patent application at any time up to one year after details of the invention are made public.
If Netlist had communicated details of a patentable invention privately to Samsung (e.g., under NDA) then that doesn't count as public disclosure and does not start the 1-year clock on the filing deadline.