The court's decision
On November 14, Judge Noël Wise of the federal district court for the Northern District of California rejected all of the motions by Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix seeking dismissal of the proceedings brought against them. According to the judge, the plaintiffs' complaint plausibly describes an unlawful agreement under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, the U.S. antitrust law. The news was reported by the Chinese website IT之家, which cites the legal media outlet LitNews.
The rejection of a motion to dismiss does not amount to a finding of guilt. The case now enters the evidence-gathering and merits-review phase: the question of whether the three companies violated the law or must pay damages remains open and will be decided later.
The allegations and the companies' defense
The complaint was filed on June 25, 2026, by seventeen consumers and small businesses from five U.S. states. The signatories argue that the three manufacturers artificially limited supplies of DRAM memory, creating a market shortage and driving up prices to the detriment of buyers. The document states that in the third quarter of 2025 the three companies together controlled more than 91% of global revenue in the DRAM sector.
The companies rejected the allegations, arguing that production adjustments are a natural response to strong demand generated by artificial intelligence, and compared the case to a previous 2018 case that had already been dismissed. The judge did not accept this reading, stating in her decision that, in her view, the facts were not as claimed.
The factors assessed and next steps
According to the plaintiffs' account, between late 2022 and 2023 the manufacturers reduced the share allocated to traditional memory in order to shift production capacity toward HBM memory. Because each gigabyte of HBM requires three to four times more silicon area than a standard DDR5, the move would have significantly squeezed the supply available to consumers and personal computers.
The judge identified a series of conduct that, in her view, goes beyond normal competitive dynamics and would be difficult to reverse without a prior agreement: Samsung and SK Hynix's refusal to enter into long-term contracts with major buyers of traditional DRAM, the postponement or suspension of new facilities, the discontinuation of DDR4 lines in the same quarter of 2025, and the closure of the Crucial brand announced by Micron on December 3, 2025. The court further observed that the three companies adopted the same customer verification mechanism in January 2026 and that they had already been involved in a price-fixing case between 1998 and 2002.
The companies must file their defense brief by December 7, 2026; the first case management hearing is scheduled for January 12, 2027.
