Samsung may have hit the end of the road in antitrust litigation against Panasonic over a patent licensing arrangement involving secure digital memory cards for cell phones and digital cameras. On Aug. 25, Judge Jeffrey White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the complaint (here), finding that Samsung’s claims were barred by the Clayton Act’s four-year statute of limitations.
The case stems from a 1999 publicly announced agreement among Panasonic, SanDisk, and Toshiba to jointly develop and promote next-generation flash memory cards. The new cards came on the market in 2000 (they now make up 80 percent of flash memory card sales worldwide), and companies that wanted to manufacture them had to sign a licensing agreement with a vehicle called SD-3C. Samsung signed a license in 2003, but last year it sued claiming that the licensing pool was anti-competitive and violated antitrust laws.
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