Netlist Prevails In Federal Circuit Appeals Of Self-Test Patents

Netlist, Inc. announced the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed earlier decisions from the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) confirming the validity of certain claims of Netlist’s U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,001,434 (‘434 patent) and 8,359,501 (‘501 patent).

These patents cover self-test technologies widely used in LRDIMMs, SSDs, and Storage Class Memory. 

Netlist has asserted these patents as part of a seven-patent lawsuit against SanDisk and Diablo Technologies, Inc. SanDisk and SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. filed a total of six petitions for Inter Partes Review (IPR) challenging the validity of these two patents, which have now been resolved in Netlist’s favor by the Federal Circuit.

Netlist has also asserted the ‘434 and ‘501 patents in the U.S. International Trade Commissionhttps://usitc.gov (ITC) against SK hynix, Inc.‘s LRDIMM and RDIMM enterprise memory products. The ITC is expected to issue a final determination in its investigation of SK hynix by March 14, 2018. Any appeals from this final determination will also be heard by the Federal Circuit.

“We are very pleased that the Federal Circuit has once again validated key patents from our portfolio covering technologies widely used in today’s high-performance memory products,” said Netlist’s CEO, C.K. Hong. “These decisions bring the total to five Netlist patents that have prevailed against challenges in the PTAB and subsequent appeals to the Federal Circuit.”

The parties will next have the opportunity to appeal the Federal Circuit decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Petitions for writ of certiorari must be filed within 90 days from today’s decisions.