SRAM Motion for Class Certification Granted; Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy Appointed Lead Counsel

On September 29, 2008, Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, granted Plaintiff's Motion to Certify a Class of Direct Purchasers of SRAM, and appointed Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy as Lead Counsel for the class of direct purchasers. In her Class Certification Order, Judge Wilken said: "[T]he court finds that common issues predominate as to the element of antitrust violation," and that "Plaintiff has advanced a plausible methodology that demonstrates that antitrust injury can be proved on a class-wide basis." The case alleges that major manufacturers of SRAM, including Samsung, Toshiba, Renesas, Hynix, Cypress, and Micron, violated federal antitrust laws by conspiring from November 1996 through December 2005 to fix, raise and maintain the prices of SRAM. In 2005 alone, the Defendants' worldwide SRAM sales were in excess of $2 billion. SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) is a memory chip used in a wide variety of computer and consumer electronics products, ranging from cell phones to high-end network servers.