A 69-employee patent firm just put Nvidia, Broadcom and Google inside its Micron import-ban case

Netlist's newest complaint at the U.S. International Trade Commission↗, filed under seal on 25 September 2026 and made public Tuesday, seeks exclusion and cease-and-desist orders against Micron and three downstream customers: Nvidia, Broadcom and Google ¹². It asserts two high-bandwidth-memory patents, U.S. 12,308,087 and 12,646,537, which Netlist says cover Micron's HBM3E, HBM4 and HBM4E products ¹. The relief reaches past the memory maker: a bar on importing Micron DRAM and the respondents' GPUs and servers that carry it ².

The filing landed the day before Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter report, due today, priced by the Street at $51.47 billion of revenue and $31.82 a share ³⁴. JPMorgan still called the setup "constructive"↗ ³.

A second Micron case in two months, aimed wider

A Texas jury awarded Netlist $445 million against Micron in 2024, and juries handed it $421 million against Samsung across 2023 and 2024 ²⁵. In July 2026 the ITC opened a probe into Samsung's memory that already named Google, Nvidia, Broadcom and Supermicro as downstream respondents; it reaches an evidentiary hearing on 23 November 2026 ⁵⁶.

On 5 August 2026 Samsung settled: a five-year license↗ worth up to about $898 million gross on Netlist's own SEC-filed math, up to $1.5 billion of memory supply, a 10 million-share purchase, and a pledge to hand Netlist documents for future ITC cases ⁵⁶. Six days later came the DDR5 complaint against Micron, Supermicro, HPE and Lenovo, instituted on 23 September 2026 as Investigation 337-TA-1523 ¹⁷.

The respondent list is the product

Netlist has 69 employees and sold $109.8 million of gear last quarter; the stock is up 512 percent this year on the docket, not the modules ⁸. Each round widens the perimeter: chipmaker, then server makers, now the companies that make and buy AI accelerators. With Samsung and Micron memory both inside ITC cases naming the same three customers, two of the three big memory suppliers sit fenced; SK Hynix is the hole ⁵⁶. That perimeter, not Micron alone, is who pays if an order ever issues.

License on Samsung's number, or fight to 2027

The Samsung benchmark equals roughly two cents of every dollar of Micron's latest quarter, which printed $41.46 billion of revenue, up from $11.32 billion a year earlier ⁵⁹. The alternative is a fight to a determination that typically lands 12 to 16 months out, no earlier than 2027, against Micron's public-interest defense as the only U.S.-headquartered DRAM maker ⁵.

Wall Street is pricing the boom, not the docket: JPMorgan held $1,540 into the print, Citi raised to $1,300, Morgan Stanley held $1,200, and Wells Fargo cut to $1,400, the lone trim, on duration doubts ³. Netlist's record is not spotless either: on 2 September 2026 the Federal Circuit affirmed cancellation of claims in a Netlist patent↗ and the stock fell 22 percent, though that patent sits in neither Micron case ¹⁰. The ITC has decided nothing; institution is not a merits ruling ⁷.

Watch 23 November

The tell is the Samsung-memory hearing on 23 November 2026, where Nvidia, Broadcom and Google are already respondents ⁵. Licenses before gavels confirm the playbook; a fight puts the border in every AI rack. Netlist does not need to win the argument. It needs Nvidia, Broadcom and Google to prefer a license to a customs hold.