On July 4, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Hao said at a regular press conference that this should be a commercial case concerning intellectual property protection. As to whether this is related to Sino-US trade friction, he believes that there is no Inevitable connection.
According to public information, as of mid-2017, Samsung, Micron Technology and Hynix accounted for 96% of the global DRAM chip market share. Well-known economist Song Qinghui told the Daily Economic News that nearly half of the company's battalion Receiving from China, some of its products are banned from selling in China, which will have a certain impact on the company's business development. At the same time, this incident will threaten its customers in China.
Xiong Haifeng, president of Shanghai Shixin Communication Technology Co., Ltd., believes that the ruling reflects the ability of domestic companies to seek part of the technology industry.
Not the final litigation result
On July 3, the plaintiff Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Fujian Jinhua) and Taiwan Lianhua Electronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Taiwan Unicom) announced on the official website that the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that Micron Semiconductor Sales (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Micron Shanghai) immediately stopped selling, imported more than 10 Crucial SSDs, memory modules and related chips, and deleted the advertisements, purchase links and other information on the above products. At the same time, it was ruled that Micron Semiconductor (Xi'an) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Micron Xi'an) immediately stopped manufacturing, selling and importing several memory products.
In the statement, Fujian Jinhua said that the company had filed a lawsuit against Micron's own brand Crucial MX300 2.5-inch SSD525GB solid state drive and Crucial DDR4 2133 8G notebook memory. It continued in the industry's authoritative advanced laboratory. Fine and rigorous layer-by-layer analysis, and found that more than ten own brand products of Micron are suspected of infringing the company's patents, including several DDR4 notebook and desktop memory sticks, MX500 series of 2TB, 1TB, 500GB, 250GB 2.5-inch solid state. The hard disk, and related infringing chips, compare the characteristics obtained by the analysis with the technical features in the claims of Jinhua, and determine the technical solutions of the products fall within the scope of protection of Jinhua patents.
Fujian Jinhua also emphasized: 'Meiguang’s infringement is unscrupulous' 'Meiguang has caused irreparable harm to Jinhua'. Taiwan’s UMC co-president said in its official statement that Taiwan’s UMC welcomed the court’s ruling. The investment in property rights is huge. For companies that damage intellectual property rights, the company will fully blame.
On July 4th, the reporter of “Daily Economic News” called Fujian Jinhua to understand the situation. Fujian Jinhua said that the company leaders are all on a business trip, and the relevant litigation situation and follow-up progress will be released in the company's official website in time.
In fact, the friction between the three parties has been around for a long time. On May 13, 2016, Taiwan Unicom announced the joint development of DRAM-related process technology with Fujian Jinhua, which caused great concern in the industry. In December 2017, Micron accused Fujian Jin Hua said that two former employees of the company left the company with technical information and joined Jinhua in Fujian. Therefore, the Taiwan court in China sued Fujian Jinhua for infringement of confidentiality, and at the same time, the Fujian Jinhua partner Taiwan UMC was listed in parallel with the responsibility of 'not doing good management'. For the defendant.
In January of this year, Fujian Jinhua and Taiwan UMC also filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Micron Technology, involving four patents. After six months of trial, on July 3, the Fujian Intermediate People's Court officially ruled that a 'prosecution ban' was issued.
It is understood that the ban in litigation is not the final solution to the dispute, but only temporarily protects the applicant. Once the referee's outcome of the litigation is in conflict with the content of the ban, then the content of the ban and the judgment result conflicts. Automatically loses its effectiveness. However, the result of the ban in the lawsuit can be executed as soon as it is delivered.
Micron’s business in China is threatened
Then, did the respondent Meiguang Shanghai and Micron Xi’an have any objections to the above ruling? On July 4th, the “Daily Economic News” reporter tried to contact Micron, and the staff of Micron’s Shanghai wiring said after listening to the reporter’s interview request. 'This week the company's legal affairs are on vacation, so no one can respond to this question.' And Meiguang Xi'an staff told reporters: 'Xi'an company has no external business, no interviews, here only responsible for manufacturing.'
According to Reuters, Micron issued a statement on the morning of July 4, saying that 'Micron has not received the preliminary ban mentioned by Taiwan’s UMC and Fujian Jinhua in the July 3 statement. ' Micron Technology said that the assessment came from Fuzhou. The company will not comment on this before the documents of the Intermediate People's Court.
It is worth noting that in the latest earnings report for the third quarter of FY2018, Micron's quarterly revenue was US$7.8 billion, up 40% year-on-year; net profit was US$3.8 billion, up 131% year-on-year.
Among them, DRAM contributed 71% of the company's operating income. According to the company's 2017 annual report, its sales in China reached US$10.39 billion, accounting for 51.12%.
Xiong Haifeng told the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that the incident has a great impact on the storage industry. The DRAM memory chip market is currently dominated by Samsung, Micron Technology and Hynix.
'This ruling implies that domestic companies are capable and are seeking part of the technology in the chip industry. 'Xiong Haifeng pointed out: 'In addition, the future of the storage market is very large, and the possibility of domestic chip companies rising and anti-repression in the future will be Greatly enhanced. The incident is only the beginning, and the anti-trapping measures of Chinese companies will not stop there.
According to the public information found by the reporter, DRAM is the most common system memory. In addition to being used as PC memory, it is widely used in various digital products such as printers and digital TVs. In the past two years, its price has been leaping forward. In 2017 alone, DRAM memory prices rose by 47%, the biggest increase in nearly 30 years.
From the perspective of product gross margin, compared to PC memory that has been at the gross margin of 30% to 40%, the mobile memory used in smartphones and the wider application server memory gross margin reached 50% to 60%.
According to SIA (American Semiconductor Industry Association) data, as of June this year, the global semiconductor market sales growth rate of more than 20% for 13 consecutive months. In the sub-sector, the growth rate of the storage industry is far ahead, including DRAM growth rate of more than 50% .
In Song Qinghui's view, it is somewhat overstated to say that the incident is a counterattack of China's semiconductor industry. As far as it knows, the DRAM technology developed by Fujian Jinhua and Taiwan UMC is in the middle of the industry, and will not be for the future. Waiting for the memory giant to pose a threat.
From a global perspective, the United States, South Korea and other countries in the field of semiconductor investment are not small. According to market research firm IC Insights statistics, in 2017, the global semiconductor industry R & D investment of more than 1 billion US dollars in the list of 18 companies, about half of them come from The United States, and Samsung, Hynix two South Korean semiconductor companies invested a total of 5.144 billion US dollars.
However, China is also working hard. IC Insights related reports show that China will invest 11 billion US dollars in the semiconductor field in 2018, accounting for 10.6% of the world. In 2015, China's capital expenditure in the semiconductor industry was only 2.2 billion US dollars.
Song Qinghui believes that the fact that Micron’s infringement of Fujian Jinhua has not been finally recognized by the court, the domestic arrogance should not spread.