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▲The photo shows the Samsung Electronics office building. |
[에너지경제신문 박성준 기자] Samsung Electronics received a verdict from a jury ordering it to pay 400 billion won in damages in a US semiconductor patent infringement lawsuit.
According to Reuters, cited by Yonhap News, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas ruled in favor of Netlist on the 21st (local time) in a memory patent infringement lawsuit filed by Netlist, a U.S. semiconductor company, against Samsung Electronics.
The jury ruled that the memory modules used in Samsung Electronics’ high-performance computers infringed on five of Netlist’s patents, awarding compensation of more than $303 million (403.5 billion won).
Netlist filed a lawsuit in 2021, claiming that Samsung’s memory products and other data technologies used in cloud computing servers infringed on its patents, and demanded $404 million (538.1 billion won) in damages.
Netlist claims that its technology increases the efficiency of memory modules, enabling it to derive useful information from a large amount of data in a short period of time, and Samsung Electronics took the patented technology after collaborating on the project.
Samsung Electronics has argued that Netlist’s patents are invalid and that its technology works differently from Netlist’s.
Samsung Electronics and Netlist did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment regarding the verdict.
Established in 2000 by Hong Chun-ki, former LG Semiconductor CEO, Netlist is headquartered in Irvine, California.
In 2016 and 2017, Netlist filed a lawsuit with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that SK Hynix infringed on its semiconductor technology patents.
At the time, the ITC concluded that there was no patent infringement by SK Hynix, but Netlist again filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Western District of Texas.
In the end, an agreement was reached in 2021, and SK Hynix decided to pay 40 million dollars (53.2 billion won) in royalties. After the verdict that day, netlist shares soared 21% during the day on the New York Stock Exchange.
