IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Netlist, Inc.
(NASDAQ: NLST), announced today that the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Federal Circuit upheld the validity of all claims in the
reexamination of U.S. Pat. No. 7,532,537 ("'537 Patent") brought by
Inphi Corporation. The '537 Patent includes 60 claims covering the
fundamental operation of LRDIMM.
In a written precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit affirmed
earlier determinations by the Patent Examiner and the Patent Trial
and Appeal Board ("PTAB") that the '537 Patent claims are valid.
The '537 Patent is the only LRDIMM patent known to have survived
the scrutiny of reexamination in the USPTO. The '537
reexamination lasted more than five years, amassing a written
record totaling thousands of pages including expert testimonies,
oral hearings and multiple decisions from the Examiner, PTAB and
now the Federal Circuit. The '537 Patent has emerged from this
process with fundamental claims covering DDR3 and DDR4 LRDIMM that
will be difficult to invalidate in the future. To continue to
challenge the validity of these patents, Inphi must now either
request a rehearing with the Federal Circuit, or appeal directly to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
"This is a landmark victory for Netlist and represents the most
significant validation yet of Netlist's industry leading LRDIMM
intellectual property," said Netlist's Chief Executive Officer,
C.K. Hong. "The '537 joins a very
select subset, out of the millions of issued patents, that have
ever cleared both patent office reexamination and appellate court
review. As the only company to own multiple fundamental LRDIMM
patents with virtually untouchable validity, Netlist is now well
positioned to capture significant value from the fast growing
LRDIMM market."
The LRDIMM market is projected to reach nearly $3 billion this year, and grow to over
$6 billion by 2018 according to data
compiled by De Dios & Associates in August 2015. This latest validation of Netlist's
IP comes on the heels of victories earlier this year when the PTAB
rejected multiple attempts by SanDisk and Smart Modular to
invalidate three other fundamental Netlist patents. One of those
patents, U.S. Pat. No. 8,516,185 ("'185 Patent"), covers Netlist's
pioneering distributed buffer architecture that was later adopted
by the industry for DDR4 LRDIMM. The other two patents relate to
clocking and buffering techniques that are critical to the design
of hybrid memory modules such as Non-Volatile DIMMs. In addition to
the '185 and the '537, Netlist now holds more than two dozen issued
U.S. patents that broadly cover fundamental aspects of DDR3 and
DDR4 LRDIMM.
About Netlist, Inc.
Netlist creates solutions that accelerate turning data into
information. We design and manufacture controller and
software-based memory solutions for our OEM and Hyperscale
customers in the server and storage space. Flagship products
NVvault® and EXPRESSvault™ accelerate system performance and
provide mission critical fault tolerance. HyperVault®, Netlist's
next-generation architecture, expands the performance and capacity
of memory channel storage. The company holds a portfolio of
patents, many seminal, in the area of hybrid memory, rank
multiplication and load-reduction, among others. To learn more,
visit www.netlist.com
Safe Harbor Statement:
This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding
future events and the future performance of Netlist. These
forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that
could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected
or projected. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not
limited to, the launch and commercial success of our products,
programs and technologies; the success of product partnerships;
continuing development, qualification and volume production of
HyperVault™, EXPRESSvault™, NVvault®, HyperCloud® and VLP Planar-X
RDIMM; the timing and magnitude of the decrease in sales to our key
customer; our ability to leverage our NVvault® and EXPRESSvault™
technology in a more diverse customer base; the rapidly-changing
nature of technology; risks associated with intellectual property,
including risks associated with the inherent uncertainty of the
litigation process, patent infringement litigation against us as
well as the costs and unpredictability of litigation over
infringement of our intellectual property and the possibility of
our patents being reexamined by the United States Patent and
Trademark office; volatility in the pricing of DRAM ICs and NAND;
changes in and uncertainty of customer acceptance of, and demand
for, our existing products and products under development,
including uncertainty of and/or delays in product orders and
product qualifications; delays in the Company's and its customers'
product releases and development; introductions of new products by
competitors; changes in end-user demand for technology solutions;
the Company's ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the
Company's reliance on suppliers of critical components and vendors
in the supply chain; fluctuations in the market price of critical
components; evolving industry standards; and the political and
regulatory environment in the People's
Republic of China. Other risks and uncertainties are
described in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K filed on
March 27, 2015, and subsequent
filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made by
the Company from time to time. Except as required by law, Netlist
undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any
forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise.
For more information,
please contact:
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Investors:
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Press:
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Brainerd
Communicators, Inc.
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Brainerd
Communicators, Inc.
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Mike Smargiassi/Jenny
Perales
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Sharon Oh
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NLST@braincomm.com
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NLST@braincomm.com
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(212)
986-6667
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(212)
986-6667
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SOURCE Netlist, Inc.