Spansion has sued Samsung and a number of Samsung's flash customers including Apple, Asus, Kingston, Lenovo, PNY, RIM, Sony, Sony-Ericsson, and Transcend. with two separate patent infringement complaints filed with the ITC and the US District Court in Delaware.

Samsung is alleged to have violated five Spansion patents relating to floating-gate technology, which represents 90% of the flash memory market.

The six patents cover: Memory Cell Structure for Elimination of Oxynitride (ONO) Etch Residue and Polysilicon Stringers; Formation of STI (Shallow Trench Isolation) Structures Within Core and Periphery Areas of Flash Memory Device; Method of Programming a Memory Cell to Contain Multiple Values;  Method for Reducing Program Disturb During Self-Boosting in a NAND Flash Memory; Methods and Arrangements for Forming a Single Interpoly Dielectric Layer in a Semiconductor Device; Symmetrical Program and Erase Scheme to Improve Erase Time Degradation in NAND Devices.

The acquisition of Saifun Semiconductor, last March, expanded Spansion’s IP portfolio and enabled Spansion to create a licensing business and generate new revenue streams.

Spansion said it has tried to negotiate a licence deal with Samsung but the negotiations have failed.

Spansion is seeking an injunction and treble damages for the use of our IP and for the harm caused by Samsung’s infringement of Spansion patents.  

Memory manufacturers have been reluctant to accept licensing deals with memory IP providers because the memory business is erratic and frequently loss-making. For example, Rambus has engaged in lawsuits with the memory manufacturers for over a decade without getting a satisfactory outcome.