China's largest flash memory chip manufacturer, Changjiang Storage, sues Meiguang for patent infringement in the United States

IT Home reported on November 12th that recently, China's largest flash memory chip manufacturer, Changjiang Storage, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against American storage chip giant Meguiar and its subsidiaries, demanding that the court prohibit Meguiar from continuing to use multiple 3DNAND technology patents of Changjiang Storage, and compensate for losses and litigation costs. Changjiang Storage claims that multiple solid-state drive products from Meiguang are suspected of infringing on eight patents of Changjiang Storage, which involve the formation method, control method, direct array contact (TAC), reading method, and multi-layer stacking method of 3DNAND memory.

According to IT Home, storage chips are mainly divided into two categories: DRAM (dynamic random storage) and NAND (flash memory). The former belongs to volatile memory, which means that once the power is cut off, the stored data is immediately lost and is generally used as a memory auxiliary CPU (central processing unit) for calculations; The latter is a non-volatile memory used to store data and manufacture solid-state drives.

Changjiang Storage pointed out in the indictment that Meiguang used Changjiang Storage's patented technology to compete in the market and protect its market share without authorization, and Meiguang did not pay reasonable fees for using the aforementioned patents, which infringed on Changjiang Storage's interests and curbed the latter's innovation drive. It also alleges that Micron cited patents related to Yangtze River Storage in its patent documents, proving that Micron's understanding of Yangtze River Storage's patent portfolio is very important, but Micron did not take any practical action to seek authorization for Yangtze River Storage patents.

Changjiang Storage also stated in the lawsuit that if the court fails to issue a permanent injunction on Meiguang's infringement of patents, relevant plans should be formulated, such as Meiguang paying patent licensing fees to Changjiang Storage.

Changjiang Storage was established in July 2016, headquartered in Wuhan, Hubei, with a focus on designing and manufacturing 3DNAND flash memory chips. Changjiang Storage adopts its self-developed Xstacking architecture, which has caught up with foreign giants in terms of technology. In the NAND field, Changjiang Storage mass-produced 128 layers of 3D stacking products in 2021, and 232 layers of products have also begun to increase in volume.

Meiguang is a leading storage chip company and a competitor to Changjiang Storage in the NAND market. According to Jibang Consulting data, Meiguang had a market share of 13% in the NAND market in the second quarter of 2023, ranking fifth. In terms of market volume, there is a significant gap between Changjiang Storage and Meiguang.