fwiw...Sandisk vs Samsung 1997 ... 752 and 338 patent infringements.

 3-3-1997.....

"That district court action is on hold while SanDisk pursues a "fast track" ITC investigation of two of its more significant patents (EN, Jan. 15, 1996). Patent 5,172,338, "Multi-state EEPROM read and write circuits and techniques," relates to how multiple cells on a NAND flash die are programmed in parallel, but with such precision as to terminate voltage levels without under- or over-programming cells. Patent 5,418,752, "Flash EEPROM system with erase sector select," relates to the ability to erase randomly selected sectors of a NAND flash die simultaneously, also known as multi-block erase."

 e.Digital doesn't care how the flash hardware physically functions...they only tie in the read/write(program) /reset(erase) options through their low level management.

doni