Micron gets hit with a whopping $445 million damages bill after it was found liable for patent infringements

2400 SSD With NVMe
(Image credit: Micron)

Micron has been ordered to hand over a mega $445 million in damages for infringing on the patent rights of Netlist, a California based memory technology company that designs high-performance SSDs and memory subsystems.

Micron was found to have willfully infringed on Netlist's patents.  According to Yahoo Finance, the judge in the case can multiply the damage amount by up to three times, potentially resulting in damages of well over $1 billion.

According to The Register, the patents in question are US Patent numbers 7,619,912 and 11,093,417. The first describes a memory module decoder, while the second relates to the data buffering of memory modules. The jurors awarded $425 million for infringement of the first, and $20 million for infringement of the second. Both patents cover "methods for improving the performance or capacity of DRAM memory modules in computer systems".

This isn't the first time Netlist has been the beneficiary of a favorable patent infringement ruling. In 2023, it was awarded $303 million in damages after a jury found Samsung infringed on its patents. However, litigation in that case is ongoing. In April, the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) ruled the patents in question are invalid. 

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

$445 million is a lot of money, but Micron isn't exactly struggling. It's not quite seeing Nvidia levels of explosive growth, but it is riding the AI wave, with its enterprise memory products generating surges in revenue. It's latest Q2 financial report revealed quarterly revenue of $5.82 billion, up from $4.73 billion for the prior quarter and over $2 billion more than the $3.69 billion the company reported for the same period last year.

It can afford some good patent attorneys. 

Best AIO cooler for CPUsBest air cooler for CPUsBest PC fans


Best AIO cooler for CPUs: Keep your chip chill.
Best air cooler for CPUs: Classic, quiet cooling.
Best PC fans: Quiet and efficient.

Chris Szewczyk
Hardware Writer

Chris' gaming experiences go back to the mid-nineties when he conned his parents into buying an 'educational PC' that was conveniently overpowered to play Doom and Tie Fighter. He developed a love of extreme overclocking that destroyed his savings despite the cheaper hardware on offer via his job at a PC store. To afford more LN2 he began moonlighting as a reviewer for VR-Zone before jumping the fence to work for MSI Australia. Since then, he's gone back to journalism, enthusiastically reviewing the latest and greatest components for PC & Tech Authority, PC Powerplay and currently Australian Personal Computer magazine and PC Gamer. Chris still puts far too many hours into Borderlands 3, always striving to become a more efficient killer.

Read more
Promotional image of a generic Snapdragon X Plus chip in a stylized circuit board
Arm pushes back against Qualcomm in court, claiming it's not out to be a chip competitor and the current licence situation is losing them $50 million in revenue
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding the company's new GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards and a Thor Blackwell robotics processor during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a raft of new chips, software and services, aiming to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Group allegedly trying to smuggle Nvidia Blackwell chips stare down bail set at over $1 million
Nvidia headquarters
Nvidia loses over $200 billion in valuation in a single day, as Trump's tariffs continue to roll out
The NVIDIA stand at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, September 19, 2024. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Nvidia share price plummets as it loses more than $600B in valuation, the biggest single-day loss in history
Promotional image of a generic Snapdragon X Plus chip in a stylized circuit board
Arm won't keep chasing after Qualcomm on the grounds of licensing shenanigans—but the legal jostling isn't over
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding the company's new GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards and a Thor Blackwell robotics processor during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a raft of new chips, software and services, aiming to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Jen-Hsun Huang's net worth dropped by a reported $20,800,000,000 after DeepSeek fears shook the AI market to its core earlier this week
Latest in Memory
A photo of Corsair's Vengeance DDR5-8400 CUDIMM memory kit
Corsair Vengeance DDR5-8400 CUDIMM review
Corsair's personalized memroy on a gradient
Corsair's new 'personalised RAM' gives you the option to pick the look and speed of memory you hide in the case anyway
A promotional image showing multiple Corsair Vengeance CUDIMM memory sticks on a desk
Corsair rolls out its first CUDIMM memory sticks for Intel Arrow Lake gaming PCs and they're as pricey as you'd expect them to be
Corsair Vengeance RAM sticks
We've more or less hit RAM price equilibrium: this 32 GB 6000 MT/s DDR5 kit is closing in on the price of a comparable DDR4 kit
G.SKILL DDR5
G.SKILL and Kingston break the 12,000MT/s DDR5 memory barrier with Intel's new Arrow Lake CPU
A pair of Team Group DDR5-RAM kits against a teal background with a white border
Need some speedy DDR5 for a new build or gaming PC upgrade? This Team Group 32 GB kit is just $86
Latest in News
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft reportedly has an anti-harassment plan in place for Assassin's Creed Shadows developers
Avowed Kai holding out his hand toward camera while explaining something to the player.
Avowed's new patch just gave you 6 more talent points to muck around with, along with a heap of fixes and improvements
In-game recreation of iconic Indiana Jones stealing the idol in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Silent Hill 2 remake and Indiana Jones are at historically low prices this Steam Spring Sale—so long as you don't buy them directly from Steam
MSI RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC Plus graphics card under a red light
This MSI Afterburner file unlocks 36 Gbps RTX 50-series memory overclocks for, y'know, the few people that actually own a card
A Steam Deck with SteamOS running in desktop mode.
A new and improved desktop experience just landed on Steam Deck and SteamOS is readying 'support for non-Steam Deck handhelds'
Olivia, a hunter from Monster Hunter Wilds, looks perplexed in an icy blue environment.
Monster Hunter Wilds players wonder if frenzied monsters are a little undercooked, as one slaps a sickly bird into a fine paste in just 25 seconds