Micron Settles Netlist Patent Dispute for $600 Million
The deal pays Netlist $30 million a quarter for five years and ends a fight that included a $445 million jury verdict and a push to block Micron chips at the U.S. border.
Micron will pay Netlist $600 million to settle a patent dispute over Micron’s memory chips, Netlist said on Tuesday.
The money comes as $30 million a quarter for five years. In exchange, Micron gets a license to Netlist’s patent portfolio, including its high bandwidth memory technology. High bandwidth memory is the fast, stacked memory paired with AI chips.
The fight is years old. In 2024, a federal jury in Marshall, Texas, awarded Netlist $445 million after finding that Micron’s memory modules infringed two of its patents.
Netlist raised the stakes in September. It filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking to block imports of Micron chips used in products from Google, Nvidia and Broadcom for AI computing.
The trade commission can issue exclusion orders that stop products at the border, unlike a federal court, which mostly awards damages. Micron is one of only three major suppliers of high bandwidth memory, alongside Samsung and SK Hynix.
Netlist chief executive C.K. Hong said the agreement “further validates the value of our AI memory technologies.” He said the company would keep defending its patents and investing in new products. Micron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Netlist settled a separate memory-patent dispute with Samsung in August, after winning $421 million in patent verdicts against the South Korean company in Texas.
Micron shares slipped 0.3% to $1,061.14 in early trading on Tuesday, Barron’s reported.
