Licensing firms have learned that the fastest route to a settlement over memory is to threaten the customer rather than the manufacturer. Netlist is running that play again, asking the US International Trade Commission to block imports of high-bandwidth memory made by Micron Technology.
Micron is not the only respondent: Broadcom, Nvidia and Google are named too, because the disputed parts end up inside their accelerators, GPUs and servers. Two patents are cited, numbered 12,308,087 and 12,646,537, and the products in scope are Micron’s HBM3E, HBM4 and HBM4E families. Success would mean an exclusion order covering not only the chips but the systems built around them.
Micron is now on the receiving end of a second commission case from Netlist, and the two arrived barely weeks apart. The docket it wants joined to is already moving: a filing that landed on August 11 is under investigation by the commission under the designation 337-TA-1523. Micron answered on its own terms, seeking a declaratory judgment in Delaware on August 10 that its products do not infringe.
Netlist also carries momentum. An August settlement with Samsung Electronics, valued at up to $898M, came with a cross-license, so the Korean giant now pays to use Netlist’s memory designs instead of litigating them.
The risk sits with the AI supply chain. HBM is the tightest input in accelerator manufacturing and is committed well into next year. Pulling a large slice of Micron’s high-bandwidth output out of US import at this point would drag three of the largest buyers into a patent fight they had no part in starting.
