700%. That’s how much DRAM prices have climbed over the past four years, according to a class-action complaint filed June 25 in California federal court. The plaintiffs – 14 individual consumers and three small businesses – claim Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron orchestrated the run-up by colluding on supply cuts starting in 2022.
The HBM Cover Story Doesn’t Hold Up
The lawsuit’s sharpest accusation: the three companies used the industry’s shift to high-bandwidth memory (HBM) as a pretext to throttle DDR3 and DDR4 production. They coordinated the discontinuation of older DRAM generations, the complaint alleges, to tighten supply while keeping prices elevated. Apple’s recent across-the-board product price increases finally pushed buyers to sue.
Bathaee Dunne, the antitrust firm representing the plaintiffs, isn’t starting from scratch. That same firm won a case against Google over digital advertising collusion. Now it’s aiming for class-action certification covering every US consumer and business that bought anything containing DRAM since 2022.
Triple Damages Hang Over the Trio
If the court certifies the class and the plaintiffs ultimately win, the defendants would pay triple the actual damages under US antitrust law. That’s not a theoretical risk for Samsung and SK Hynix – both were found guilty of DRAM price fixing in the early 2000s, resulting in large fines and prison sentences for executives. The history complicates any claim of innocent market behavior.
Jefferies, for its part, forecasts the lawsuit won’t dent memory prices through the end of this year. But the legal clock is ticking, and a class-action verdict would rewrite the economics of an oligopoly that controls the world’s DRAM supply. Watch for the motion for class certification – that’s when the real fight begins.
Source: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing
Domain: en.sedaily.com
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