Patent Office Rejects All Claims of Second Netlist Patent

SMART Modular Technologies, Inc., manufacturer of memory modules and embedded flash products, announced that in a reexamination brought by SMART, the United States Patent & Trademark Office has issued an Action Closing Prosecution that rejects all claims in Netlist, Inc.‘s U.S. Patent No. 7,289,386.

Netlist’s ‘386 patent describes technology associated with high density registered DIMMs and is related to its U.S. Patent No. 7,619,912 for which the Patent Office previously rejected most of Netlist’s 51 claims in another reexamination brought by SMART.

Netlist has referred to the technology of the ‘912 patent as enabling HyperCloud Memory.

The USPTO previously rejected 13 claims under Netlist’s ‘386 patent on multiple grounds including that SMART’s Patent Application No.

2006/0117152 (now issued as U.S. Patent No. 8,250,295) invalidates claims. Subsequent to the PTO’s rejection of 13 claims, Netlist attempted to add additional claims 14 through 60, however, the USPTO has rejected all of the old and new claims of the ‘386 patent. As previously indicated, SMART believes that its ‘152 application shows that SMART engineers invented "rank multiplication" technology in 2003. As SMART’s ‘152 application was filed before Netlist’s ‘386 Patent, SMART believes that Netlist is not entitled to the ‘386 patent.

Iain MacKenzie, president and CEO of SMART, commented: "We are very pleased that the USPTO has adopted our arguments and has rejected all of Netlist’s ‘386 patent claims. We remain committed to our strategy of developing and protecting leading edge technology that can be commercialized in enterprise applications."

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