Last week, the Ninth Circuit reversed a summary judgment by Central District of California Judge Mark C. Scarsi that Netlist had properly terminated an agreement with Samsung under which the companies had enjoyed cross-licenses to each other’s patent portfolios. That termination underlies multiple cases between the parties, both in the District of Delaware (filed by Samsung to seek declaratory judgments of noninfringement) and in the Eastern District of Texas (filed by Netlist for affirmative patent infringement), and is relevant to litigation between Netlist and Alphabet (Google), the latter as Samsung’s customer for certain memory devices. The Texas litigation between the two produced a roughly $300M verdict in favor of Netlist earlier this year, an award that District Judge Rodney Gilstrap recently declined to enhance for willfulness. All of this may be affected by last week’s remand to the district court on the issue of whether extrinsic evidence precludes summary judgment as to breach of the November 2015 agreement between Netlist and Samsung based on the supply provision in that agreement, which the appeals court ruled is “ambiguous as a matter of law”.