Recently, Netlist and Samsung Electronics announced that they have reached a five-year patent cooperation agreement covering cross-licensing of patents, the supply of memory products, technical cooperation, and other areas, and agreed to resolve several previous patent disputes related to memory technology.

Under the agreement, Samsung will pay Netlist an upfront licensing fee of $239 million (approximately 1.71 billion yuan) and obtain a license to Netlist’s relevant storage technology patent portfolio. The agreement also stipulates that Samsung will pay quarterly licensing fees during the five-year term, with a maximum amount of $32.9 million (approximately 235 million yuan) per quarter. Based on the maximum payment amount, the total licensing fees Samsung will pay over the next five years could reach approximately $897 million (about 6.41 billion yuan).

In addition to the patent license, the two parties have also reached an agreement on the supply of memory products. Samsung will supply Netlist with memory products such as DRAM and NAND, and the two companies will engage in related technical cooperation. Furthermore, Samsung will subscribe to 10 million shares of Netlist. The two parties have agreed to terminate and settle the related patent disputes previously pending in U.S. courts and before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and other bodies.

Netlist and Samsung Previously Engaged in Multiple Patent Lawsuits Over Storage Technology

Previously, Netlist and Samsung were involved in multiple patent lawsuits concerning storage technologies related to server memory modules, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence applications.

In 2021, Netlist filed a lawsuit against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that certain memory products manufactured and sold by Samsung infringed on its storage technology patents. In April 2023, a jury in the case found Samsung guilty of infringing Netlist’s relevant patents and ordered Samsung to pay Netlist $303.15 million (approximately 2.17 billion yuan) in damages.

In 2024, Netlist filed another lawsuit against Samsung regarding storage technology patents. In November 2024, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found Samsung guilty of infringing Netlist’s patents and ordered Samsung to pay $118 million (approximately 840 million yuan) in damages.

On September 30, 2025, Netlist filed its first Section 337 complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging that Samsung, Google, and Supermicro had infringed six of its patents;

On June 16, 2026, Netlist filed another 337 complaint with the ITC involving two new patents, adding Google, NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Supermicro as additional respondents; shortly before the two parties reached a settlement, the U.S. ITC formally initiated a 337 investigation into Netlist’s allegations that Samsung had infringed on two of its computer memory patents.