Jinhua No Products Sold in U.S. U.S. Court Rejects Micron Lawsuit

Started in 2017.Meiguang's case of suing Fujian Jinhua for infringement of rights has recently made new progress and is beneficial to Jinhua. The U.S. federal court dismissed Micron's lawsuit on the grounds that Jinhua's products were not sold in the United States and exceeded the jurisdiction of the U.S. court.

The dismissal of this lawsuit is the second defeat since the fight between Meiguang and Jinhua. 2018In January 1993, Jinhua sued the Fuzhou court for infringing on Jinhua's patents for some of Meguang's storage products, including memory chips, solid-state memories and chips. The Fuzhou court issued a "lawsuit ban" to Meguang in July 2018, demanding Meguang Semiconductor to immediately stop selling and importing more than 10 Yingruida solid-state drives, memory chips and related chips, and delete the publicity advertisements, purchase links and other information about the above products on its website. Therefore, the industry believes that Micron is frustrated. In order to retaliate against Jinhua, it lobbied to exert pressure on the U.S. Department of Commerce to issue sanctions against Jinhua and UMC in November 2018 and impose an embargo on Jinhua and UMC.

Although Jinhua due to its DRAMThe product has not been mass-produced and is not subject to the jurisdiction of the US court, but due to the previous embargo, the independent research and development of Jinhua's DRAM products has become more difficult. The attack on Jinhua is not the only action Micron has taken against domestic semiconductor manufacturers. Micron has been paying close attention to the dynamics of manufacturers in the industry in order to safeguard its own rights and interests. Therefore, some domestic semiconductor manufacturers have entered the prevention area of Micron at the beginning of their establishment.

Among the many competitors of Micron, only the Jinhua family was ambushed by Micron, and the reasons behind it are worth pondering.

Hefei Changxin is also carrying out DRAMof research and development, and has long been targeted by Micron. In 2015, Micron acquired a 67% stake in Taiwan's storage manufacturer Huaya Technology, becoming the actual controller of Huaya Technology. At the same time, Hefei Changxin and Changjiang Storage launched a poaching campaign against Huaya Technology, poaching hundreds of Huaya employees to the mainland at more than twice the salary of Huaya, many of whom were in charge. Micron also quickly took anti-digging actions. Many Taiwanese employees working in the mainland were interviewed by Taiwan prosecutors when they returned to Taiwan for the New Year and restricted them from leaving the country. However, this did not cause a substantial blow to Changxin's DRAM research and development. The reason is that Changxin pays attention to the diversity and secrecy of the research and development team. From the beginning of the layout of DRAM research and development, the source of its research and development team has been diversified, in addition to Huayake, South Korea SK Hynix, Japan's Erpida is also an important source of its research and development team, and the number and location of its research and development sites are not known to the outside world, greatly enhancing the ability to resist other manufacturers to block.

Another domestic storage giant, Yangtze River Storage, is also on Micron's encirclement and suppression list, but Micron is helpless against the Yangtze River. At the beginning of its establishment, Changjiang Storage put the autonomy of research and development in the first place, never relying on stealing the technology of other advanced storage companies for development, and focused on technology research and development, avoiding all the risks of being targeted by other manufacturers. Due to the long-term adherence to independent research and development, Changjiang Storage has successfully developed a new technology-XtackingTechnology, which shortens product development time by three months, reduces production cycles by 20%, and significantly increases NAND I/O speeds to 3.0Gbps, which is a higher storage density than traditional 3D NAND. At present, Changjiang Storage has successfully developed a 14nm process and a 32-layer 64GB 3D DRAM product. Although there is still a generation gap compared with international advanced technology, it has successfully realized the localization of memory chips, which has greatly encouraged domestic manufacturers to realize independent research and development. Confidence. I believe that with the Yangtze River Storage's insistence on independent research and development, it will be able to catch up with the international storage factories in the near future.

However, Jinhua did not firmly follow the road of independent research and development like Changjiang Storage, nor did it pay attention to the protection of the diversity of research and development teams like Changxin. As a result, its research and development team is easily damaged by hostile manufacturers. More importantly, Jinhua's research and development base is located in Taiwan, and it borrows the resources of Taiwan-based United Power for technology research and development, which provides a favorable location for US enterprises to take action against it.

Although Micron's two lawsuits against Jinhua ended in failure, in essence Jinhua's DRAMThe research and development plan has suffered a heavy blow, the lack of independent research and development capabilities, the only source of technology has been blocked, Jinhua's DRAM storage production plan has basically stagnated, and the victory of the judicial process does not enable Jinhua to get rid of its own technical difficulties.

Domestic manufacturers should not only see Meguang's repeated failures from the series of incidents in which Meguang accused Jinhua, but also think about the reasons why Jinhua has become the target of Meguang's concentrated fire among many mainland semiconductor manufacturers, and should also see the heavy losses hidden by Jinhua's apparent victory. If China Semiconductor wants to achieve long-term development, in addition to a large number of technology imports, independent research and development is the most powerful backing.