Netlist, an American multinational company, announced that it won a patent lawsuit against Samsung a few days ago. The judge who presided over the suit at the US District Court for the Central District of California judged the case in Netlist’s favor. The court ruled that Samsung had breached its duties in a joint licensing and development agreement.
According to the reports, Netlist announced that Samsung had violated its payment and supply obligations to Netlist. As a result, Netlist ended the licensing agreement between the two parties, leading to a suspension of Samsung’s patent right based on the contract terms.
- The Contract
Samsung in 2015 signed a patent cross-licensing agreement with Netlist in 2015. Samsung reportedly paid about $230 million to Netlist as licensing fees stated in the contract.
However, controversy broke out over the said agreement between the two parties in the middle of 2020. Netlist had accused Samsung of infringing on its patent agreement terms with the modular memory manufacturer As a follow-up, Netlist filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung’s storage service in a District Court for the Central District of California.
In response to Netlist’s court filing, Samsung filed a contrary lawsuit against Netlist, demanding the courts reverse its suspended patent rights.
Netlist Incorporated is a multinational company based in Irvine, California, that manufactures, designs, and trades high-performing SSDs and modular memory subsystems to enterprise customers in different industrial sectors. The organization was founded in 2000 by Hong Chun-ki, a former staff of LG Corporation.
In a similar event, Netlist reportedly had a patent licensing dispute with SK Hynix, another heavyweight storage company based in South Korea. Earlier in April 2021, SK Hynix announced that it had signed a patent cross-licensing contract with Netlist. According to the report, the South Korean company would pay about $40 million to access Netlist’s patent licensing rights.
