On July 16, 2026, a jury in Waco, Texas, at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, ruled that Japanese flash memory manufacturer Kioxia had infringed on a flash memory technology patent held by U.S. satellite communications company Viasat, ordering Kioxia to pay Viasat $229,025,021 in damages. This damages award, calculated based on a running royalty rate, covers only Kioxia’s past infringement through March 30, 2026, and does not include a one-time license fee for future use of the technology.

Kioxia is one of the world’s leading NAND flash memory manufacturers. Formerly known as Toshiba Memory, it officially changed its name in 2019. The company specializes in the research, development, production, and sale of NAND flash memory and related storage products, and has a long-standing partnership with Western Digital in the flash memory business. Viasat is a U.S.-based satellite communications company whose core businesses include satellite broadband, communications networks, and related technical services; it also holds numerous technology patents in the fields of communications, data transmission, and storage.

The patent at issue in this case is U.S. Patent No. 8,615,700, titled “Parallel Error Detection Forward Error Correction Technique for Flash Memory.” It is primarily applied to forward error correction schemes for NAND flash memory and addresses the issue of declining data reliability in flash memory during long-term use.

NAND flash memory is a non-volatile storage medium; its storage cells experience performance degradation after repeated erasure and rewriting cycles, leading to data read errors—such as misidentifying a stored “1” as a “0” or a “0” as a “1.” Consequently, flash memory products generally incorporate error correction technology to detect and correct data errors that occur during the read process, thereby ensuring storage stability.

Viasat stated that the patent in question originated from an improved flash memory error-correction architecture developed by its engineers while designing data error-correction solutions for satellite communication systems. This technology dynamically adjusts error-correction capabilities based on the real-time status of the flash memory, enhancing storage reliability and extending product lifespan while reducing power consumption.

The case was formally filed in November 2021. During the litigation, Kioxia filed a multi-party reexamination with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) under the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, seeking to invalidate the relevant claims of the patent in question. After deliberation, the PTAB ruled that certain claims of the patent were invalid, and Viasat subsequently narrowed its claims to a single remaining valid claim.

Because Kioxia contested the PTAB’s decision and filed an appeal, the district court temporarily canceled the trial originally scheduled for late 2024 to await the outcome of the appeal proceedings. Viasat subsequently petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) for a writ of mandamus to reinstate the case, arguing that the district court’s decision to stay proceedings lacked precedential basis; however, the CAFC did not grant the petition.

In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling upholding the PTAB’s determination that the remaining claims at issue were valid. The court held that the prior art cited by Kioxia did not disclose the “decoding” technical feature defined in the claims and was insufficient to prove the claim invalid.

Once the dispute over the patent’s validity was resolved, the case resumed and ultimately proceeded to the jury trial phase. According to the jury’s verdict, Viasat had met the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, sufficiently proving that Kioxia had infringed one of the claims of the patent in question; accordingly, the jury ordered Kioxia to pay the aforementioned $229 million in damages.

It is worth noting that this constitutes only the jury’s factual findings regarding the establishment of infringement and the amount of damages, and does not constitute the district court’s final judgment. Both parties may still file post-trial motions regarding the application of the law, after which the district court will issue a final judgment; the case may also be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Kioxia has made it clear that it does not accept the jury’s verdict on the infringement finding and the amount of damages, and will use all legal avenues—including post-trial motions and, if necessary, an appeal—to protect its rights and interests.