Last week it was serial patent thief Apple, who was defending themselves in a US court accused of stealing patents, this week It’s Samsung who has been nobbled to the tune of A$454 million after they were accused of the infringement of several patents owned by computer-memory company Netlist.
After a six-day trial in Texas a jury concluded, that Samsung’s “memory modules” for high-performance computing willfully infringed all five patents that Netlist owned.
The US Company claimed that Samsung violated five Netlist standard essential patents by continuing to supply products based on those designs after a licensing agreement between the two soured in mid-2020.
Representatives for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Netlist stock soared 21% after the judgement was announced.
The Irvine, California-based Netlist sued Samsung in 2021, alleging Samsung memory products used in cloud-computing servers and other data-intensive technology infringe its patents.
Netlist said its innovations increase the power efficiency of memory modules and allow users to “derive useful information from vast amounts of data in a shorter period of time.”
A Netlist attorney told the jury that Samsung took its patented module technology after the companies had collaborated on another project, according to a court transcript.
Netlist had asked the jury for $404 million in damages.
Samsung had argued that the patents were invalid and that its technology worked in a different way than Netlist’s inventions.
