Defendant

SK hynix Memory Solutions Inc.

1 case as defendant.

Cases
1
Active
0
1 closed
Filed
2016
Top venue
C.D. California Southern
1 case
Also appears as a plaintiff in 1 case View as plaintiff

Company profile

Company profile: SK hynix Memory Solutions Inc.

Company overview. SK hynix Memory Solutions Inc. (since 2018, "SK hynix memory solutions America Inc." / SKHMS America) is a wholly owned U.S. R&D subsidiary of SK hynix Inc., the South Korea–based memory maker (KRX: 000660; ~KRW 97.15 trillion / ~US$68 billion 2025 revenue, roughly 30,000–48,000 employees group-wide depending on source). The entity was formed in August 2012 when SK hynix acquired Link_A_Media Devices Corporation (LAMD, founded 2004), and is headquartered at 3103 North First Street, San Jose, California. Third-party estimates of SKHMS's own headcount vary widely (roughly 200–1,000); no official figure was found.

Products / operations. SKHMS is an R&D engineering center, not a fab or standalone product seller. It designs SSD controller system-on-chips, advanced NAND flash-management systems, and firmware for NAND-based storage spanning enterprise, client, and mobile segments — including SATA and PCIe/NVMe enterprise/client SSD controllers and eMMC/UFS controller IP used in SK hynix's memory and (via the Solidigm organization) SSD businesses.

Patent-litigation posture. This is an operating-company subsidiary, not an NPE. Its two tracked appearances are both against Netlist, Inc., a California memory-module maker: Netlist named it as a co-defendant in a patent-infringement suit filed August 31, 2016 in the Central District of California (Southern Division), and it appears as co-petitioner (with parent SK hynix Inc.) in inter partes review petitions filed December 30, 2016 at the PTAB. The split — one defendant-side suit and one plaintiff-side IPR petition — reflects a two-way dispute over validity and infringement rather than NPE-style assertion. The district court venue is C.D. Cal., not a plaintiff-friendly Texas forum.

Notable context. The tracked cases belong to a broader Netlist–SK hynix battle over server RDIMM/LRDIMM memory-module patents (e.g., U.S. Patent Nos. 8,756,364; 8,516,185; 8,001,434), pursued in parallel at the ITC (Investigation No. 337-TA-1023), which closed in January 2018 with a no-infringement determination in SK hynix's favor; additional Netlist suits followed in later years.

Netlist, Inc. v. SK hynix Inc. et al.

dismissed (settled)
Docket:
8:16-cv-01605-JLS-JCG
Filed:
2016-08-31
Terminated:
2021-04-02

Netlist sued SK hynix in the Central District of California, asserting six patents including the '364 patent against SK hynix DDR4 RDIMM/LRDIMM memory modules. SK hynix's RAND counterclaims were stayed in February 2018. The case was dismissed on April 2, 2021, with Netlist's claims dismissed with prejudice and SK hynix's counterclaims dismissed without prejudice, after reports the parties settled with a royalty-bearing cross-license.