Newshot Key Points
- Judge Noël Wise denied Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron's joint motion to dismiss a proposed indirect-purchaser class action alleging a conspiracy to restrict conventional DRAM supply.
- The court held the case was not a rerun of DRAM II, the Ninth Circuit's 2022 affirmance of dismissal of an earlier DRAM conspiracy suit against the same companies.
- The judge found that long-term HBM lock-ups, Micron's Crucial closure, fab delays, the DDR4 exit and near-identical customer vetting plausibly suggested an agreement.
- The court sided with the companies on the bare HBM pivot, the DDR3 allegations and public statements, did not rely on trade-conference meetings, and called market structure neutral.
- Answers are due Dec. 7, 2026, and the initial case management conference was reset for Jan. 12, 2027.
A federal judge on Nov. 14 declined to dismiss a proposed class action accusing Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron of conspiring to restrict the supply of conventional dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, the chips that provide temporary, high-speed data storage in computers, phones and servers.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise of the Northern District of California denied the companies' joint motion to dismiss, finding the complaint plausibly alleged an agreement in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The allegations, accepted as true at this stage, have not been proven.
The companies argued the case was a rerun of In re Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) Indirect Purchaser Antitrust Litigation, or DRAM II, in which the Ninth Circuit in 2022 affirmed dismissal of claims against the same three companies over a 2016–2018 supply restriction. "The Court finds that it is not," Judge Wise wrote, though she sided with the companies on several theories.
The suit was filed June 25, 2026, by 17 consumers and small businesses from five states. According to the complaint, the three companies controlled more than 91% of global DRAM revenue as of the third quarter of 2025 and cut production beginning in late 2022. The suit asserts a Sherman Act claim and claims under the laws of California, Florida, Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin, which the parties agreed rise and fall with the federal claim.
The complaint alleged the companies then shifted capacity to high bandwidth memory, or HBM, a specialized, stacked form of DRAM used in artificial intelligence accelerators, and between April and June 2025 announced they would wind down mainstream DDR4 production. It alleged a 697% price increase over 18 months, yet none of the companies meaningfully expanded conventional capacity.
Without direct evidence of an agreement, the plaintiffs had to allege more than conscious parallelism, the lawful practice of competitors in a concentrated market independently making similar moves. That requires plus factors, additional facts suggesting a preceding agreement.
Judge Wise rejected the companies' argument that timing gaps undercut parallel action. SK Hynix and Micron announced cuts three weeks apart in late 2022, she noted, and Samsung's lag of about four and a half months, until April 7, 2023, was "not such an unreasonably long delay that it defeats an allegation of parallel conduct on a motion to dismiss."
She found parallel conduct in the supply cuts, the HBM pivot and the DDR4 exit but set aside the DDR3 allegations, because the complaint admitted Micron kept producing DDR3, conduct she called "neither parallel temporally nor parallel in kind."
She also agreed with the companies that the HBM pivot alone was insufficient, since the complaint itself alleged HBM was more profitable when the shift began. Under the Ninth Circuit's decision in In re Musical Instruments and Equipment Antitrust Litigation, action against self-interest must be "so perilous in the absence of advance agreement that no reasonable firm would make the challenged move."
But according to the complaint, all three signed long-term contracts locking in HBM supply, Samsung and SK Hynix reportedly refused long-term agreements with major conventional DRAM customers, and Micron announced on Dec. 3, 2025, that it would close Crucial, its 30-year-old consumer brand. Those moves, plus the failure to expand despite record prices, "are the sort that at the pleading stage, it appears no reasonable firm would make without a prior agreement," she wrote.
She applied similar reasoning to allegations that Samsung and Micron delayed or halted new DRAM plants, citing a 1990 Ninth Circuit ruling in a petroleum case that "Changes in refinery capacity are not readily reversible." "The Court views the commitment to build or not build manufacturing capacity as analogous," she wrote.
On DDR4, the companies argued they "exited that product on different timelines," but the complaint alleged all three decided within the same quarter while DDR4 "remained in wide use." Apart from pointing to increased Chinese production without citing the complaint, the judge wrote, the companies "offer no rationale for their sudden, rapid, and coordinated exit from DDR4." Their assertion that they feared Chinese competition, she added, "is not in the complaint."
Judge Wise found that near-identical customer-vetting questions all three companies allegedly adopted in January 2026 "strongly support a plausible inference of conspiracy." She rejected the companies' "obvious and non-conspiratorial explanation" of booming AI demand, noting that the vetting began in January 2026, years after the AI boom and the HBM pivot began. She also rejected their argument that the plaintiffs never alleged any exchange of vetting information, writing that requiring such direct evidence "is not the standard."
Other theories did not help the plaintiffs. The judge held that the companies' public statements to investors did not distinguish the case from DRAM II, which found similar statements insufficient. She found the plaintiffs' allegations about industry-conference meetings went further than those in DRAM II but declined to rely on them, writing that DRAM II "seemingly all but forecloses a trial court from giving any weight to trade conference meetings" unless plaintiffs identify what was actually exchanged. She called the market's oligopolistic structure "neutral in the analysis."
According to the complaint, the companies and two other manufacturers formed a criminal cartel to fix DRAM prices from 1998 to 2002; Samsung paid a $300 million fine, Hynix paid $185 million, and Micron received immunity as a cooperating whistleblower. The companies argued that now-20-year-old history should not count, but Judge Wise, like the DRAM II court, rejected that argument.
At the hearing, the companies quoted the late Judge Posner's line that competitors in concentrated markets "watch each other like hawks." Judge Wise wrote: "But Plaintiffs' allegations go beyond hawks watching each other; their contentions are more akin to hawks flying in formation – an activity that hawks ordinarily do not do."
The plaintiffs are represented by Bathaee Dunne LLP. Samsung is represented by O'Melveny & Myers LLP, SK Hynix by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, and Micron by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
Judge Wise ordered the companies to answer by Dec. 7, 2026. Because the court had reset argument by about three weeks, she also granted the companies' unopposed administrative motion to continue early case deadlines and reset the initial case management conference for Jan. 12, 2027, at 9 a.m.
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