Court denies motion to dismiss DRAM price fixing case

A federal court on Nov. 14 denied a joint motion by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron to dismiss a proposed antitrust class action accusing them of conspiring to restrict conventional dynamic random-access memory supply, as detailed in litnews.ai's report. U.S.

District Judge Noël Wise of the Northern District of California ruled that the indirect-purchaser complaint plausibly alleged an illegal agreement under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The ruling means the three memory manufacturers must formally answer the antitrust claims rather than ending the litigation at the preliminary pleading stage.

This report examines the legal theories evaluated by the court, the specific corporate actions cited as plus factors, and the procedural timetable set for the manufacturers. It is intended for hardware procurement specialists, consumer device makers, and enterprise infrastructure managers monitoring memory pricing and component supply availability.

01Parallel supply cuts and high bandwidth memory pivot

The complaint alleges that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron controlled over 91% of global DRAM revenue as of the third quarter of 2025 and enacted coordinated production cutbacks starting in late 2022. SK Hynix and Micron announced production reductions three weeks apart in late 2022, while Samsung announced cuts roughly four and a half months later on April 7, 2023. Judge Wise concluded that Samsung's multi-month gap was not an unreasonably long delay that would defeat parallel conduct allegations at the motion to dismiss stage.

The manufacturers shifted manufacturing capacity toward high bandwidth memory, a stacked DRAM architecture utilized in artificial intelligence accelerators. Between April and June 2025, all three vendors announced plans to wind down mainstream DDR4 production.

Although conventional DRAM prices surged by 697% across an 18-month span, none of the three manufacturers expanded conventional output. The court noted that because HBM was inherently more profitable, the capacity pivot toward HBM by itself was insufficient to demonstrate conduct against self-interest without additional corroborating factors.

02Plus factors beyond lawful conscious parallelism

To advance beyond non-actionable conscious parallelism, the plaintiffs presented circumstantial plus factors indicating advance coordination. The complaint pointed to long-term agreements locking up HBM capacity while Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously declined long-term supply pacts with key conventional DRAM buyers.

Furthermore, Micron announced on Dec. 3, 2025, that it would shutter Crucial, its 30-year consumer memory brand. The court concluded that shutting consumer channels and refusing conventional contracts during record pricing represents conduct reasonable firms would avoid without mutual understanding.

Analogous reasoning applied to delayed and suspended fabrication facility construction projects across Samsung and Micron. Citing Ninth Circuit petroleum industry precedent establishing that refinery capacity modifications cannot be readily reversed, Judge Wise treated manufacturing fab commitments as similarly binding. The court observed that the trio abandoned DDR4 within the identical quarter while the memory generation remained widely deployed, rejecting unpleaded defenses regarding foreign market competition.

03Synchronized customer vetting questions in early 2026

Judge Wise highlighted allegations that all three chipmakers instituted near-identical customer-vetting questionnaires in January 2026 as strong support for an inferential conspiracy. The semiconductor firms argued that market conditions and unprecedented AI product demand offered an obvious alternative explanation for buyer screening. The court dismissed that defense, pointing out that customer questionnaire alignment emerged years after both the AI demand surge and the initial HBM operational pivot were well underway.

The court also dismissed the defense argument that plaintiffs failed to show an explicit exchange of vetting intelligence between the vendors. Under federal antitrust pleading rules, requiring direct evidence of private information sharing at the complaint stage exceeds established legal standards. The ruling observed that the collective pattern surpassed lawful market observation, describing the companies' aligned conduct as akin to hawks flying in deliberate formation rather than merely watching competitors closely.

04Rejected theories and prior criminal antitrust history

Several plaintiff arguments failed to assist the complaint under governing circuit authority. Judge Wise determined that public statements made during executive investor calls did not distinguish the current allegations from DRAM II, where the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of similar claims in 2022.

The court also declined to credit trade conference meetings because Ninth Circuit case law largely prevents trial courts from weighing conference attendance without facts showing specific discussions. Additionally, the oligopolistic structure of the memory market was deemed analytically neutral.

The court did consider the historical context of the DRAM manufacturing sector. Between 1998 and 2002, the three defendants alongside two other manufacturers operated an adjudicated price-fixing cartel, resulting in a $300 million fine for Samsung, $185 million for Hynix, and whistleblower immunity for Micron. Judge Wise rejected defense arguments that a twenty-year-old criminal enforcement record held no relevance to present market conduct assessments.

05Case management deadlines and representation

Seventeen consumers and commercial purchasers across California, Florida, Minnesota, New York, and Wisconsin originally initiated the proposed indirect-purchaser class action on June 25, 2026. State-level claims from all five jurisdictions remain tied directly to the outcome of the federal Sherman Act count. Bathaee Dunne LLP serves as lead counsel for the plaintiff class, while O'Melveny & Myers LLP represents Samsung, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP represents SK Hynix, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represents Micron.

Following the denial of the dismissal motion, Judge Wise ordered Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron to submit formal answers to the complaint by Dec. 7, 2026. Because oral arguments experienced an earlier three-week postponement, the court granted an unopposed motion extending preliminary deadlines. The initial case management conference is scheduled for Jan. 12, 2027, at 9:00 a.m. in the Northern District of California.