News Micron loses patent trial, must pay rival Netlist $445 million in damages

[Admin]

A Texas jury decided that Micron Technology infringed on patents held by memory module-maker Netlist.

Micron loses patent trial, must pay rival Netlist $445 million in damages : Read more

 

[thestryker]

Ah yes the famous Eastern District of Texas home to ridiculous amounts of patent litigation. I often wonder how much of this nonsense could be avoided by properly funding the USPTO. At least this company appears to actually make some products despite acting like a patent troll here.

 

[basel8]

It's annoying reading these patent-lawsuit stories and they never explain the patent, the technical arguments for or against etc. BTW, I took a look at Netlist's website and meagre product pages and unremarkable technology, it looks like a thinly veiled patent troll.

 

[cyrusfox]

Appears there is much more to this story, I was trying to find out the merit of the patents, and from my brief 10 minutes of searching, This is the third trial of this sort, First 2 were against Samsung and Google. Hynix is not being sued because they are paying royalties(Settled out of court for pennies and are now sharing patents in cross licensing scheme). Samsung was paying Royalties in the past but stopped. It reeks of collusion of large corporations to snuff out valid IP Claims and this is lawfare to avoid it and attempt to destroy netlist. If this was Obvious art/unpatentable I don't see why any of them would have paid royalties in the first place.

Its all very muddy and I wish there was more discussion around the actual foundation of the patents. Based on the staying power of Netlist against these goliaths, there is obviously some merit to their patent claims.

Here is a link to the actual 912 patent, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7619912B2/en
Appears the story goes back to 2009, Google applying tech without licensing, admitted to use in court documents. This patent has survived many reviews thus far, see how the appeals and continued lawfare change the damages.

 

[thestryker]

If this was Obvious art/unpatentable I don't see why any of them would have paid royalties in the first place.

If the price is right sometimes it's cheaper to pay out than fight it. There was a case that Newegg had actually fought some time back and got the patent invalidated which several, much larger, companies had just been paying royalties for.

 

[bill001g]

Seems overlap in the multiple cases. There is a link to this in the main article but it seems that while this lawsuit was going on the main patent they were fighting over was ruled invalid.
https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/pub...F2AE9cFS6M4Altm83Q67-CNFVsTXWTctrP1cetup2ZhWQ