Samsung faces $303 mn jury verdict in memory patent lawsuit in US

Samsung Electronics Co. lost a semiconductor patent infringement lawsuit filed in the US. The South Korean company received a jury verdict to pay about $300 million in compensation.

A jury in the Eastern Federal District Court in Texas determined in favor of Netlist Inc. in a memory patent infringement lawsuit  against Samsung Electronics on Friday and found compensation of more than $303 million, according to Reuters. 

The jury determined that the memory modules used in Samsung Electronics' high-performance computers violated five patents of Netlist, Reuters reported.

Netlist filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging Samsung's memory products and other data technologies used in cloud computing servers infringed its patents and demanded $404 million in compensation.

Netlist claimed that their technology increases the efficiency of memory modules, allowing them to derive useful information from large amounts of data in a short period of time, and that Samsung Electronics took patented technology after collaborating on the project.

On the other hand, Samsung Electronics has countered that Netlist's patents are invalid and that its technology works differently from Netlist's.

Founded in 2000 by Hong Chun-ki, who worked for LG Semiconductor, Netlist is headquartered in Irvine, California.

Netlist filed a lawsuit with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in 2016 and 2017, claiming that SK Hynix infringed on its semiconductor technology patents.

The ITC concluded that there was no patent infringement by SK Hynix, but Netlist again filed a patent infringement suit with the Federal District Court in Western Texas.

Eventually, an agreement was reached in 2021, and SK Hynix decided to pay $40 million in royalties.

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com