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Samsung Hit With $303 Million Fine, Sued Over Alleged Memory Patent Infringements

T0@st

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Netlist Inc. an enterprise solid state storage drive specialist has been awarded over $303 million in damages by a federal jury in Texas on April 21, over apparent patent infringement on Samsung's part. Netlist has alleged that the South Korean multinational electronics corporation had knowingly infringed on five patents, all relating to improvements in data processing within the design makeup of memory modules intended for high performance computing (HPC) purposes. The Irvine, CA-based computer-memory specialist has sued Samsung in the past - with a legal suit filed at the Federal District Court for the Central District of California.

Netlist was seemingly pleased by the verdict reached at the time (2021) when the court: "granted summary judgements in favor of Netlist and against Samsung for material breach of various obligations under the Joint Development and License Agreement (JDLA), which the parties executed in November 2015. A summary judgment is a final determination rendered by the judge and has the same force and effect as a final ruling after a jury trial in litigation."



The company's statement continued: "The Court also held that Netlist properly terminated the JDLA and confirmed that Samsung no longer has a valid license to Netlist's patent portfolio. The jury is left to decide on direct damages related to the breach of contract during the trial set to commence on November 30, 2021 in the Central District of California." Past press articles have indicated that Netlist has been quite regular with litigation-related activities - it has targeted American multinational Google LLC and another rival SSD producer, SK Hynix, over alleged technology patent infringements. Samsung has faced several patent infringement cases in the United States - with a notable Supreme Court legal battle fought between it and arch rival Apple Inc. A conclusion to that case was reached by late 2016 - with Samsung escaping having to pay a fine valued at $400 million.

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Wow, $303.000.000, now that's gonna hurt Samsung! :cool: Or does it?

$ 245.700.000.000 (Samsung's total revenue of 2022)
$ . . . - 303.000.000 (fine)
=0,1233211233211233% (of the total revenue of 2022)

Just peanuts for Samsung. Good for Netlist Inc. to reside in the US, if they where in South Korea Samsung would most likely have gotten away with a slap on the back.
 
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One more case of a random company, that no one knows where it came from, going against a real company who produces something relevant. Great.
 
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Netlist? Some sort of patent collection company? Hmm, reads like a legit company from Wikipedia if the entry is to be trusted. Amazing that computer memory can still be patented. "Netlist holds a portfolio of patents in the areas of server memory, hybrid memory, storage class memory, rank multiplication and load reduction. The company has a portfolio of more than 130 issued and pending U.S. and foreign patents" Well, they are definitely flexing their litigation it seems.
 
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Wow, $303.000.000, now that's gonna hurt Samsung! :cool: Or does it?

$ 245.700.000.000 (Samsung's total revenue of 2022)
$ . . . - 303.000.000 (fine)
=0,1233211233211233% (of the total revenue of 2022)

Just peanuts for Samsung. Good for Netlist Inc. to reside in the US, if they where in South Korea Samsung would most likely have gotten away with a slap on the back.

It's always fun to see giants hurt (not really per your calculations, but still a slight tickle at least), but Netlist seems to be nothing more than a good old patent troll who doesn't produce any value and only exists to squeeze some money here and there from others who are actually making stuff.

300 million might be less than what the lawyers would cost but I wish there were incentives for bringing the hurt, not only fighting the suit but going after other patents the company may have and finding prior art to invalidate them, like Cloudflare has been doing.

 

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Wow, $303.000.000, now that's gonna hurt Samsung! :cool: Or does it?

$ 245.700.000.000 (Samsung's total revenue of 2022)
$ . . . - 303.000.000 (fine)
=0,1233211233211233% (of the total revenue of 2022)

Just peanuts for Samsung. Good for Netlist Inc. to reside in the US, if they where in South Korea Samsung would most likely have gotten away with a slap on the back.

You can't go based solely on revenue. Look at profit. In Samsungs case there was a profit of 32.5 billion USD for 2022 so the 303 million dollar fine was trivial.
 
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You can't go based solely on revenue. Look at profit. In Samsungs case there was a profit of 32.5 billion USD for 2022 so the 303 million dollar fine was trivial.

When it comes to "big business" revenue numbers are way more conclusive than net profit numbers. You know, they always find ways to cook their books to cut down income taxes. ;) Just look at the orange guy who didn't pay any taxes for years. And compared to Samsung he's a small fish, they basically run the country and call the shots.
 
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Wow, $303.000.000, now that's gonna hurt Samsung! :cool: Or does it?

$ 245.700.000.000 (Samsung's total revenue of 2022)
$ . . . - 303.000.000 (fine)
=0,1233211233211233% (of the total revenue of 2022)

Just peanuts for Samsung. Good for Netlist Inc. to reside in the US, if they where in South Korea Samsung would most likely have gotten away with a slap on the back.
Only $245.7 in revenue? I don't think you'd need the extra zeros for that.

/s if that wasn't obvious enough, but I'm just annoyed at people using comma as decimal separator and period as digit separator in their native language also using it when writing in English.
 

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One more case of a random company, that no one knows where it came from, going against a real company who produces something relevant. Great.


Netlist makes datacenter SSDs so they are far different from a patent troll.
 
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Netlist makes datacenter SSDs so they are far different from a patent troll.
It's still a company with one foot in the grave wanting to profit more than its entire year's revenue...

"Netlist Inc reported revenue of 161.6M for FY 2022, an increase of 13.55% compared to FY 2021. Net Income: Decreased from 790.75% to -33.4M."
 
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