Context:
- While flash memory has revolutionized computing, personal technology, gaming, enterprise data storage, and e-commerce, it has its limitations. In particular, NAND flash memory (the most common type) is very error-prone – as data is written and erased from its transistors, flash memory degrades in quality. Viasat, a global communications company (specialized in satellite engineering), has designed an improved way to structure flash error correction, including a novel architecture and the ability to adapt to degradation in flash memory’s reliability.
- In November 2021 (full complaint below box), Viasat sued Japanese computer memory manufacturer Kioxia in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas over the alleged infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,615,700 (“Forward error correction with parallel error detection for flash memories”). The complaint asserted that several of Kioxia’s products, specifically NAND-flash-memory-containing products, infringed that patent – and it sought several million dollars in damages. Kioxia denied the allegations and argued that the patent was invalid.
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Counsel
Viasat is being represented by Bartlit Beck’s J. Scott McBride, Jordan Golds, Macgregor Lebuhn, Matthew R. Ford, Nevin M. Gewertz, Nosson D. Knobloch, Tulsi E. Gaonkar, Jessica R. Bernhardt, and Meg E. Fasulo, as well as Gillam & Smith’s James Travis Underwood and Melissa Richards Smith.
Meanwhile, Kioxia is being represented by a team at Baker Botts: Michael Hawes, Elizabeth L. Flannery, Michael A. Silliman, Nolan McQueen, and Roger J. Fulghum, as well as Craig D. Cherry and Mark D. Siegmund of Cherry Johnson Siegmund James.