Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron $MU Technology were sued on June 25 in federal court over allegations of collusion and price-fixing in the commodity memory market.
Seventeen plaintiffs allege the chipmakers coordinated a shift to HBM production to artificially restrict commodity DRAM supply and drive up prices
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Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron $MU Technology were sued on June 25 in federal court over allegations of collusion and price-fixing in the commodity memory market.
Filed in the Northern District of California, the complaint names 17 plaintiffs — a mix of individuals and small businesses — who claim the three chipmakers conspired to keep commodity DRAM artificially scarce in order to inflate prices, according to Wccftech. The case has been assigned to Judge Noel Wise, according to Appleworld.today.
At the heart of the complaint is an accusation that all three companies exploited the industry's transition to High-Bandwidth Memory — a chip architecture central to AI workloads — as a pretext for winding down output of legacy formats including DDR3 and DDR4, according to Wccftech. Prices for commodity DRAM have climbed approximately 700% over a four-year span, a rise the plaintiffs attribute directly to the alleged supply manipulation, according to Appleworld.today.
Among the remedies requested, the plaintiffs want the court to intervene and end what they describe as a deliberate, industry-wide production squeeze, and they are also pursuing treble damages, according to Appleworld.today. The lawsuit aims to represent a broader class of consumers and businesses that purchased products containing commodity DRAM during the price surge, according to Wccftech.
The complaint also cites Apple $AAPL's recent price increases on iPads and Macs as evidence of the downstream impact of the alleged supply restrictions, according to Wccftech.
The lawsuit points to prior conduct by the defendants to establish what it characterizes as a pattern of anti-competitive behavior. Criminal convictions from the 2000s figure into the complaint as well: the filing notes that Samsung and SK Hynix each entered guilty pleas on Department of Justice price-fixing charges during that era, with the cases producing a combined $731 million in fines and landing several executives behind bars, according to Wccftech.
The named plaintiffs include individuals such as Marc Garciaguirre, Thomas Yu, and Thomas Barber, as well as small businesses including Troy's Computers LLC and JB Tech Solutions LLC, doing business as My Florida PC.
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