Netlist Said USPTO Issues Reexamination Certificate for Seminal LRDIMM Patent

Netlist, Inc. announced the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued an Inter Partes Reexamination Certificate for U.S. Patent No. 7,532,537, marking the final milestone of the years-long reexamination brought by Inphi Corp.

The ‘537 patent covers the fundamental concept of load reduction, a technology integral to the high performance memory module market, a market forecasted to be $37 billion ^[1] through 2021.

The ‘537 patent is one of a number of company’s patents to have survived post-grant review proceedings. Netlist prevailed in multiple Inter Partes Reviews (IPRs) brought by SanDisk Corp. and SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. against U.S. Patent No. 8,516,185, covering the distributed buffer architecture adopted by the industry for DDR4 LRDIMM, as well as U.S. Patent Nos. 8,301,833 and 8,516,187 related to clocking and buffering techniques that are critical to the design of hybrid memory modules such as NVDIMM and Storage Class Memory. The firm has also been successful in defending U.S. Patent Nos. 8,001,434 and 8,359,501 against IPRs brought by SanDisk and SMART Modular, with 15 total claims being validated related to self-test technologies used in LRDIMMs, SSDs, and storage class memory.

The decisions in the self-test IPRs are currently on appeal before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We are very pleased to have received this hard-won certificate for the reexamination of our seminal ‘537 patent,” said C.K. Hong, CEO, Netlist. “We believe the success we have had in defending our intellectual property in the USPTO and the federal courts underscores the strength of our patent portfolio, particularly in the area of high performance DIMMs, and provides us with a solid platform from which to license our technology.“

⁽¹⁾ Based on estimates from De Dios & Associates, DRAM market advisor