Samsung Wins in Patent Dispute with Netlist

All patents under the lawsuits were deemed invalid, removing the basis for the compensation payment of $330 million
Industry views it as a victory for Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics has won all five patent invalidation lawsuits against American semiconductor company Netlist.

According to foreign media and the semiconductor industry, on the 3rd, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) sided with Samsung Electronics on the 2nd (local time) for two patent invalidation lawsuits filed by Samsung Electronics.

Including the three cases that have already received invalidation decisions, all five patents that Netlist claimed were infringed have been declared invalid. As a result, all bases for the payment judgment from the lawsuits conducted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas last April have disappeared.

The lawsuit between the two began in 2015 when Netlist claimed a breach of the joint development and license agreement signed by both companies.

Netlist claimed that its technology helped Samsung Electronics by improving the efficiency of memory modules. This allowed for quickly extracting useful information from large amounts of data.

While Netlist claimed that Samsung Electronics took the patented technology after collaborating on the project, Samsung Electronics countered by saying that Netlist’s patents are invalid and that their technology operates differently from Netlist’s.

In response, a U.S. jury ruled in April last year that Samsung Electronics had infringed on five of Netlist’s patents. In August of the same year, the court accepted the jury’s verdict and ruled that Samsung Electronics should pay Netlist $330 million in damages.

In response, Samsung Electronics filed for patent invalidation trials with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board for the five patents, and the results were all invalidation decisions for the five cases related to the patent lawsuits, including these two cases.

However, there is still a possibility that Netlist will appeal against this invalidation decision. In this case, it will be finalized in the appellate court.