Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology are being sued by seventeen plaintiffs in the California Northern District Court, who allege that the three tech manufacturers are colluding to artificially increase the price of RAM.
Seventeen individual plaintiffs, including three small businesses, have launched a class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against the three largest RAM and chip manufacturers in the world: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. The plaintiffs allege that the three tech companies are colluding to raise the prices of RAM by keeping supplies artificially low, blaming it all on an AI data center-driven “RAMpocalypse” rather than corporate policy.
The Garciaguirre et al v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al case was filed earlier this week, on June 25, in the California Northern District Court, and lists three small computer retailers, Troy’s Computers LLC, JB Tech Solutions LLC, and WNTD Fab LLC, among its seventeen plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs claim that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology are essentially part of a cartel that is collaborating to inflate DRAM and chip prices by controlling the overwhelming majority of the market. While proving that will obviously be a lot harder than alleging it, it’s no secret that the three companies own roughly 90 percent of the DRAM market.
And it’s no secret that Samsung and SK Hynix have been previously indicted for doing exactly what the plaintiffs are accusing them of doing now. In 2005, two Samsung executives and one Hynix America executive were indicted by a San Francisco jury for DRAM price-fixing and “bid-rigging.”
Bid-rigging can take many forms, but in this example, Samsung and Hynix America were accused of “issuing price quotations in accordance with the agreements reached” during private meetings, and “agreeing during those meetings and telephone conversations to charge prices of DRAM at certain levels to be sold to certain [original equipment manufacturers]” in the United States.
more links: https://wccftech.com/memory-trio-samsung-sk-hynix-micron-face-class-action-lawsuit/
Getting a slap on the wrist is hardly embarrassing. They were only fine 180 million last time around.