A federal judge in California on 14 November denied the joint motion to dismiss filed by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron in a proposed class action alleging they agreed to restrict the supply of conventional DRAM, LitNews reported, quoting the order. The ruling lets the case go forward; it is not a finding that the companies agreed to anything.
The complaint says the three companies held 33.2%, 32.6% and 25.7% of global DRAM revenue in the third quarter of 2025, a combined 91.5%, by our arithmetic. In LitNews’s words, “The allegations, accepted as true at this stage, have not been proven”.
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The key insight: As we read it, the order changes where the case stands, not what is proven: the three makers that hold 91.5% of DRAM revenue on the complaint’s figures, by our arithmetic, now have to answer claims that remain allegations.
The case is Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 3:26-cv-06345 in the Northern District of California. Its CourtListener docket lists entry 68, filed at 2:39 p.m. Pacific time on 14 November, as “Order on Administrative Motion per Civil Local Rule 7-11 AND Order on Motion to Dismiss”.
The day before, the docket shows, District Judge Noël Wise heard 27 minutes of argument and “took the matter under submission”. The order’s text is not yet in the free RECAP archive, so the order quotes below are as LitNews printed them.
LitNews reported that Judge Wise denied the motion “in full”, finding the complaint plausibly alleged an agreement in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The companies had argued the case was a rerun of DRAM II, a 2022 Ninth Circuit decision. “The Court finds that it is not”, Judge Wise wrote, as LitNews quoted her.
On timing, she wrote that Samsung’s lag of about four and a half months behind SK Hynix and Micron was “not such an unreasonably long delay that it defeats an allegation of parallel conduct on a motion to dismiss”.
On the shift to HBM, the high bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, she wrote that the pivot by itself “might not be sufficient”, but that “the related conduct tips this factor over the edge to weigh in Plaintiffs’ favor”, LitNews reported.
She also wrote that customer-vetting practices the three companies allegedly adopted in January 2026 “strongly support a plausible inference of conspiracy”. Answering the companies’ line that competitors “watch each other like hawks”, she wrote that the claims “are more akin to hawks flying in formation”.
Milestones in Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics from the CourtListener docket; the 14 November outcome and the 7 December and 12 January dates are as LitNews reported them. The conspiracy claims are allegations and have not been proven.
What Was Posted on X
A federal court in California found that the plaintiffs’ allegations plausibly suggest Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron agreed to restrict DRAM supply.
The court denied the three companies’ motion to dismiss, allowing the antitrust lawsuit to proceed.
Jukan (@jukan05) posted this at 08:06 UTC on 15 November. It says a federal court in California found the plaintiffs’ allegations plausibly suggest the three companies agreed to restrict DRAM supply, and that the court denied their motion to dismiss; its image is a screenshot of the LitNews article on the order. The piece checks the post against the court docket and the LitNews article, and keeps the claims as allegations.
What the Court Gave No Weight
LitNews reported that the judge gave no weight to three of the plaintiffs’ arguments. Investor statements, including Micron’s 2022 reference to “supply discipline”, did not set the case apart from DRAM II.
On meetings at industry conferences, she wrote that DRAM II “seemingly all but forecloses a trial court from giving any weight to trade conference meetings” absent specifics. She called the market’s three-company structure “neutral in the analysis”.
What the Complaint Alleges
The suit was filed on 25 June 2026, the docket shows, by 17 consumers and small businesses from five states, LitNews reported. The complaint alleges that SK Hynix and Micron announced production cuts in late 2022 and that Samsung “announced matching cuts” in April 2023, then that all three shifted capacity to HBM.
It alleges HBM “requires approximately three to four times the silicon wafer area per gigabyte compared to conventional DDR5 DRAM”. It says conventional DRAM contract prices rose 171.8% year on year as of the third quarter of 2025, about 50% in the fourth quarter and 95% in the first quarter of 2026.
The complaint also alleges that Micron announced in December 2025 that it would close Crucial, its consumer memory brand. It recalls the 1998 to 2002 DRAM price-fixing case, in which, it says, Samsung paid a $300 million criminal fine and SK Hynix’s predecessor paid $185 million. Our June piece on the filing set out the complaint’s case in more detail.
What the Companies Say
In their joint motion of 2 September, the companies wrote that the three “independently reduced production amid falling prices” in a bust cycle, “and then shifted capacity toward more profitable products in response to surging AI-driven demand”.
When the suit was filed, Samsung told the Korea JoongAng Daily: “The allegations raised in the complaint are unfounded. We operate our business in strict compliance with the principles of fair competition and relevant laws and regulations”. An SK Hynix spokesperson told the paper the company was “currently reviewing the complaint thoroughly”.
We found no statement from the three companies on the 14 November order in the sources we checked by 09:30 UTC on 15 November, and we did not contact them for this piece.
What Comes Next
LitNews reported that Judge Wise ordered the companies to answer the complaint by 7 December 2026 and reset the initial case management conference for 12 January 2027 at 9 a.m. The memory makers’ output plans remain the backdrop, as our piece on SK Hynix’s fourth-quarter DRAM guidance shows.
The Structural Read
As we read LitNews’s account, the judge leaned on moves she called difficult if not impossible to unwind, such as long-term HBM contracts, the Crucial closure and fab decisions, and gave no weight to investor statements or conference meetings.
As we read the two filings, the dispute is over one cause: the plaintiffs allege the shift to HBM was coordinated, while the companies’ motion says it answered surging AI-driven demand.
Judge Noël Wise, order of 14 November 2026, as quoted by LitNews
“Plaintiffs’ allegations go beyond hawks watching each other”
Three Implications
FOR MEMORY BUYERS The complaint alleges conventional DRAM contract prices rose 171.8% year on year as of the third quarter of 2025, then about 50% and 95% in the next two quarters.
FOR THE THREE MAKERS LitNews reported that answers are due on 7 December 2026, with the initial case management conference set for 12 January 2027 at 9 a.m.
FOR AI INFRASTRUCTURE READERS The complaint alleges HBM takes about three to four times the silicon wafer area per gigabyte of conventional DDR5 DRAM.
The framework says: “Memory is becoming the new compute. HBM growth is outpacing accelerator demand, making memory the rate-limiting factor in the AI scaling equation.”
As we read it, the suit tests that pull from the buyer’s side: the plaintiffs allege the move to HBM starved conventional DRAM by agreement, and the companies say demand drove it; the framework does not discuss the case.
Shares of global DRAM revenue in the third quarter of 2025 as alleged in the complaint (paragraph 72). The 91.5% combined share and the 8.5% for all others are our arithmetic.
What Is Not Established
No court has found that Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron agreed to restrict supply. At this stage the judge accepted the complaint’s allegations as true; the companies deny them, and the case has not reached evidence.
We have not read the order itself; its wording here comes from LitNews. The 91.5% share and the price figures are the complaint’s, which we did not check against the underlying market data.
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A federal judge denied Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron’s motion to dismiss a DRAM supply class action on 14 November, LitNews reported, so the case moves to the companies’ answers, due 7 December. The three hold a combined 91.5% of DRAM revenue on the complaint’s figures, by our arithmetic; the conspiracy claims remain allegations.
A note on sourcing. The case number, the order’s docket entry and the hearing come from the CourtListener docket of Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics, which lists the 14 November order but does not yet hold its text. The ruling, the quotes from the order and the next dates are as LitNews reported them in its article of 14 November, which we read in full. Complaint figures come from the complaint itself and are allegations; the companies’ position comes from their motion to dismiss and from statements to the Korea JoongAng Daily in June. The 91.5% combined share is our arithmetic. The companies were not contacted for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
