Micron was ordered to hand over損害賠償44,500 in damages for violating the patent rights of Netlist, a California-based memory technology company that designs high-performance SSDs and memory subsystems.

Micron was found to knowingly infringe the Netlist patent.  According to Yahoo Finance, the judge in this case can increase the amount of damage by up to 3 times, potentially causing more than損害10 billion in damage.

According to the Register, the patents in question are U.S. Patent numbers 7,619,912 and 11,093,417. The 1st is about the memory module decoder, and the 2nd is about the data buffering of the memory module. The jury awarded$425 million for the first infringement and授与2.20 million for the second infringement. Both patents cover "methods for improving the performance or capacity of DRAM memory modules in computer systems."

This is not the first time that Netlist has been the beneficiary of a favorable patent infringement ruling. In 2023, it was awarded損害賠償3300 million in damages after a jury found Samsung had infringed its patent. But the lawsuit in that case is ongoing. On May 4, the U.S. Patent Review Board (PTAB) ruled that the patent in question was invalid. 

During the trial, Micron claimed that the '912 patent held by Netlist was deemed invalid by PTAB, and it has indicated its intention to appeal.

Mic44,500 is a lot of money, but Micron isn't exactly struggling. Nvidia's explosive growth has not been seen much, but it is riding the wave of ai and enterprise memory products are generating a surge in revenue. The latest Q2 financial report revealed that quarterly revenue increased by4473,000 fromと582,000 in the previous quarter, exceeding the報告369,000 reported in the same period last year by more than220 billion.

It can afford some good patent attorneys.