Data storage firm secures partial win against Samsung
Samsung fails to convince jury of non-infringement | Development comes after Google failed to defeat Netlist’s lawsuit over patents covering similar tech | McKool Smith | Irell & Manella.
Netlist has secured a partial victory against tech firm Samsung after a jury granted Netlist’s motion in part for dismissing Samsung’s complaint, in a dispute over standard essential patents for computer memory technologies.
Samsung failed to persuade a court to deliver a judgment of non-infringement relating to a trio of patents, while it also denied Samsung's request to file a second amended complaint.
Judge Richard Andrews delivered the decision on Monday August 1 at the US District Court for the District of Delaware.
He also tossed Samsung’s inequitable conduct and ‘unclean hands’ claims regarding one of the three patents (US patent number 7,619,912).
Separately, following the order, Netlist filed a complaint against Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas for Samsung’s infringement of the ‘912 patent.
The South Korean defendants, comprising Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electronics America, and Samsung Semiconductor, stand accused of “wilful” patent infringement in the US.
This development comes after Google’s failure to defeat Netlist’s lawsuit over patents covering similar technology in May, and builds upon a series of lawsuits that began with Google in 2009 when Netlist was founded.
Jayson Sohi, Netlist's director of IP strategy, said in a statement: "We are pleased Judge Andrews dismissed half of the pending claims from Samsung's Delaware lawsuit, including the ‘912 claim.
“We look forward to continue defending our intellectual property rights in the remaining portion of this case.”
Rank multiplication technology
Netlist, headquartered in California, designs and manufactures products for the cloud computing, virtualisation, and high-performance computing markets.
The patent in dispute is titled the ‘Memory Module Decoder’ and relates specifically to a concept called ‘rank multiplication’.
A memory module is a device that contains individual memory devices arranged in ‘ranks’ on a printed circuit board.
At the time of the invention, asserts Netlist, most computer systems supported access to only one or two ranks, limiting the number of ranks that could be added for each memory module.
Netlist filed the application for patent ‘912 in 2007 and had it granted in 2009.
Related complaints
Back in 2009, Netlist filed a complaint against Google and semiconductor firm Inphi, alleging infringement of the ’912 patent in separate proceedings at the Northern District and Central District of California.
Then in 2010, Google, Inphi, and SM—a memory development partner with Samsung—sought inter partes re-examination of the patent.
SM was not accused of infringement by Netlist and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ordered re-examination and merged the three proceedings.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) twice affirmed the validity of claim 16 of the patent, and the Federal Circuit summarily affirmed the board.
Netlist, represented by law firm McKool Smith and Irell & Manella, is now seeking unspecified damages from Samsung. So far the defendants’ counsel have not appeared
In a separate case, Samsung was sued in June 2022 by Texas-based ImberaTek, a subsidiary of IdeaHub, for infringing six of its patents related to semiconductor technology.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories sent like this straight to your inbox.
Today’s top stories
