Law firm: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron made price agreements around dram

An American law firm has filed a lawsuit against Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron because the manufacturers have agreed on price around dram. As a result, consumers would have paid too much. The office is looking for participants in the class action case.

In an announcement, the Hagens Berman office writes that it has established on the basis of its own research that the manufacturers made mutual agreements to artificially limit the stock of dram in order to cause an increase in the price. In the recently filed suit, the office writes that consumers overpaid for products such as smartphones, computers and cameras as a result. The memory manufacturers would have started making agreements in 2016, the document said. In the years before that, the price of dram would have fallen due to mutual competition.

Furthermore, the three companies would have held a 96 percent share of the global memory market by the middle of last year. In the period covered by the case, from the summer of 2016 to 2018, the price of dram with a capacity of 4GB would have increased 130 percent, the office claims in the complaint. Market research firm IC Insights attributed the price increase in 2017 to production capacity lagging behind demand for memory.

The office is looking for Americans who, for example, bought a smartphone or a computer between July 1, 2016 and February 1, 2018. They can join the current class action case, or group action. The case is in California. The office says it won a case against dram manufacturers in 2006, where they paid a $300 million settlement. Reuters reported at the end of last year that China is starting an investigation into possible price-fixing among memory manufacturers.

Dram prizes according to Hagens Berman