IRVINE, Calif., May 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Netlist, Inc.
(NASDAQ: NLST), today announced it has cleared the final hurdle in
the years-long reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 7,532,537, with
Inphi's decision not to seek further appeal to the U.S. Supreme
Court following the Federal Circuit's denial of Inphi's petition
for rehearing in January. Netlist's seminal '537 patent is directed
to the fundamental concept of load reduction that is integral to
the design of DDR4 LRDIMMs.
Netlist also announced that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board
(PTAB) issued decisions last week again confirming the validity of
15 total claims in the Inter Partes Review (IPR) of U.S. Patent
Nos. 8,001,434 and 8,359,501 brought by SanDisk. Netlist's '434 and
'501 patents cover self-test technologies widely used in LRDIMMs,
SSDs, and Storage Class Memory.
"We are very pleased that after many years of defending our
intellectual property in the USPTO and through the appeal process,
we ultimately prevailed with the validation of our seminal '537
patent," said Netlist's Chief Executive Officer, C.K. Hong. "As our portfolio continues to grow
and strengthen, we are focused on capturing licensing opportunities
as well as leveraging our IP assets to drive the adoption of our
breakthrough products in the marketplace."
The PTAB denied SanDisk's request for rehearing of the '434 in
its entirety, again confirming the validity of the 14 claims found
patentable last December. With respect to the '501, the PTAB
confirmed the patentability of claim 4, but reversed itself in
finding two other claims to be unpatentable. The parties will now
have the opportunity to appeal the decisions on these IPRs to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Netlist has asserted
claim 4 along with other claims from the '501 as part of its seven
patent law suit against the ULLtraDIMM product from SanDisk and
Diablo Technologies.
With respect to the '537, the USPTO will now go through the
administrative process of issuing a certificate with the 60 claims
that survived the five year reexamination process. The certificate
will likely be issued later this year, at which time the patent is
available for enforcement.
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. A forward‑looking statement is neither a
prediction nor a guarantee of future events or circumstances and is
based on currently available market, operating, financial and
competitive information and assumptions. Forward-looking statements
involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to
differ materially from those expected or projected, including,
among others, risks associated with the launch and commercial
success of our products, programs and technologies; the success of
product, joint development and licensing partnerships; continuing
development, qualification and volume production of HyperVault™,
EXPRESSvault™, NVvault®, HyperCloud® and VLP Planar-X RDIMM;
the timing and magnitude of the continued decrease in our sales;
our ability to leverage our NVvault® and EXPRESSvault™ technology
in a more diverse customer base; our need to raise additional
capital and our ability to obtain financing when necessary; the
rapidly-changing nature of technology; risks associated with
intellectual property, including 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 or reviewed by the
United States Patent and Trademark office and the Patent Trial and
Appeal Board; volatility in the pricing of DRAM ICs and NAND flash;
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 our and our customers' product
releases and development; introductions of new products by
competitors; changes in end-user demand for technology solutions;
our ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; our reliance
on suppliers of critical components and vendors in the supply
chain; fluctuations in the market price of critical components;
evolving industry standards; the political and regulatory
environment in the People's Republic of
China; and general economic and market conditions. Other
risks and uncertainties are described in our annual report on Form
10-K filed on March 4, 2016, and
subsequent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
we make from time to time. Except as required by law, we undertake
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:
Brainerd Communicators,
Inc.
Mike Smargiassi/Jenny
Perales
NLST@braincomm.com
(212)
986-6667
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SOURCE Netlist, Inc.