Samsung lost $303 million in a patent infringement action related to computer memory.
On Friday, a federal jury in Texas sided with computer memory provider Netlist Inc. and awarded the company more than $303 million for patent infringement by computer giant Samsung Electronics Co.
After a six-day trial in Marshall, Texas, the jury found that Samsung’s “memory modules” for HPC intentionally infringed all five patents that Netlist had accused the Korean tech giant of infringing.
There was a delay in getting responses from the companies’ representatives. After the verdict was announced on Friday afternoon, shares of Netlist rose by 21.
In 2021, Netlist, based in Irvine, California, filed a lawsuit against Samsung, claiming the latter’s memory devices infringe on its patents due to their widespread use in cloud computing servers and other data-intensive technology. Netlist claims that its innovations improve memory modules’ power efficiency and let users “derive useful information from vast amounts of data in a shorter period of time.”
According to the transcript, a lawyer for Netlist testified that Samsung stole its copyrighted module technology after the two businesses had worked together on another project.
When it came to damages, Netlist asked the jury for a whopping $404.
Specifically, Samsung claimed that the patents were invalid because their technology was fundamentally different from that developed by Netlist.