Posted on Wednesday, May 27 2009 @ 17:54 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
SanDisk and Samsung
announced they've signed a deal that will cross-license their flash memory portfolios until 2016 and that Samsung will continue to supply SanDisk with a guaranteed portion of its flash memory production.
The new agreements become effective when the current cross-license and supply agreements expire on August 14, 2009, and will run for seven years from that date, the companies stated in a joint statement The cross-license agreement includes rights to each party's patents broadly covering multi-level cell flash memory and flash storage systems, but does not license either party's patent claims specific to 3-D memory technology.
Over the seven years of the incoming license the estimated effective rate of the fixed payments and royalties is expected to be approximately half of the effective rate in recent years under the current license. However, the companies did not state who was expected to be the financial beneficiary and nor were other inancial terms of the agreements disclosed.
