Samsung Hit with $303 Mln Jury Verdict in Computer-memory Patent Lawsuit

People in front of a Samsung store at a main shopping area in downtown Shanghai, China February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
People in front of a Samsung store at a main shopping area in downtown Shanghai, China February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
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Samsung Hit with $303 Mln Jury Verdict in Computer-memory Patent Lawsuit

People in front of a Samsung store at a main shopping area in downtown Shanghai, China February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
People in front of a Samsung store at a main shopping area in downtown Shanghai, China February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

Computer-memory company Netlist Inc convinced a federal jury in Texas on Friday to award it more than $303 million for Samsung Electronics Co's infringement of several patents related to improvements in data processing.

The jury in Marshall, Texas determined after a six-day trial that Samsung's "memory modules" for high-performance computing willfully infringed all five patents that Netlist accused the Korean tech giant of violating, Reuters reported.

Representatives for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Netlist stock was up 21% following the verdict on Friday afternoon.

Irvine, California-based Netlist sued Samsung in 2021, alleging Samsung memory products used in cloud-computing servers and other data-intensive technology infringe its patents.

Netlist said its innovations increase the power efficiency of memory modules and allow users to "derive useful information from vast amounts of data in a shorter period of time."

A Netlist attorney told the jury that Samsung took its patented module technology after the companies had collaborated on another project, according to a court transcript.

Netlist had asked the jury for $404 million in damages. Samsung had argued that the patents were invalid and that its technology worked in a different way than Netlist's inventions.



WhatsApp to Start Showing Ads to Users in Some Parts of the Messaging App

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
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WhatsApp to Start Showing Ads to Users in Some Parts of the Messaging App

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)

WhatsApp said Monday that users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app's Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day. However, they won't appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

"The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads," WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It’s a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later. Parent company Meta has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like the user's age, the country or city where they're located, the language they're using, the channels they're following in the app, and how they're interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it won't use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It's one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetize the app's user base. Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates. And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel's visibility to new users.