Although Korea's Samsung is the target of the complaints, Spansion (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has named the manufacturers of the downstream products in the ITC complaint. Companies named in the ITC case include Samsung, Apple, Asus, Kingston, Lenovo, PNY, RIM, Sony, Sony-Ericsson, Transcend, among others.

The Spansion patents named in these suits involve floating-gate technology in flash memory designs. In its NOR flash products, Spansion has implemented charge-trapping technology, which is expected to replace floating-gate technology in the future. Flash memory companies, including Samsung, have announced their plans to transition to charge-trapping in future products.

The suits are ''seeking the exclusion from the U.S. market of well over one hundred million MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras and other consumer electronic devices containing Samsung's infringing flash memory components,'' according to Spansion. 'The complaint in the U.S. District Court in Delaware also seeks an injunction and treble damages for patent violations relating to Samsung's flash memory.

''Samsung's infringement of our intellectual property not only harms Spansion, but it threatens the foundation of technology innovation,'' said Boaz Eitan, executive vice president of Spansion and CEO of Saifun.

Last year, flash memory vendor Spansion announced it acquired non-volatile memory IP provider Saifun Semiconductor Ltd.

In 2006, Samsung trotted out a NAND flash chip made on 40-nm process technology that eliminated the traditional floating-gate structure. Instead, it sported a proprietary oxide-nitride-oxide layer that the company calls charge trap flash.

At the time, Samsung claimed its charge trap flash (CTF) technology will allow it to scale NAND down to 20-nm. Samsung refered to the total structure as Tanos, which comprised of tantalum (a metal), aluminum oxide (a high-k material), nitride, oxide and silicon layers.

Samsung's approach seems similar to the path Spansion took for its MirrorBit NOR devices. MirrorBit technology also uses a trapped-charge, nitride-based architecture and eliminates the floating gate.

By: DocMemory
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