Consumers sue Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron over DRAM prices

Fourteen individual consumers and three small businesses filed a class-action complaint on June 25 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron of cutting output of conventional DRAM to inflate memory prices. The filing seeks class certification, an injunction and treble damages and was assigned to Judge Nathanael M. Cousins.

The complaint alleges the three companies shifted production away from older DDR3 and DDR4 memory and toward high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, used in artificial intelligence systems. Plaintiffs say that reallocation of capacity created an artificial shortage of mainstream DRAM and coincided with roughly a 700% rise in conventional DRAM prices over four years.

The group of defendants controls about 90% of the global DRAM market, according to the complaint. Plaintiffs state that higher component costs have been passed to consumers, citing recent retail price increases including several MacBook and iPad models and a $300 increase for a 1TB MacBook Pro that manufacturers attributed in part to rising memory and storage costs.

The complaint asks the court to award treble damages, which can triple monetary recovery if antitrust violations are proved, and to issue an injunction to change production practices. The plaintiffs must show more than parallel business decisions; the complaint says it will present evidence of timing, collective shifts to HBM and the sharp price increases to support an inference of coordination.

Previous litigation and enforcement actions over DRAM pricing are detailed in the filing. A similar class action filed in 2018 against the same three companies was dismissed in 2020, and that dismissal was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in 2022 because the courts found insufficient evidence of an agreement. In the mid-2000s, Samsung and Hynix pleaded guilty in a Department of Justice investigation into DRAM price fixing and paid criminal fines; Micron cooperated with that probe and avoided a corporate fine, though a Micron employee later pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

The new complaint centers on the timing of production changes, the industrywide shift toward HBM and the sharp increases in conventional DRAM prices. The case remains pending in the Northern District of California.