Mar
27
The messy Rambus affair
Posted by Dirk Avery at 9:55 am under Litigation, Patent, Technology.
While the Gibson/Guitar Hero/Rock Band war rages on, chip designer Rambus has won a major battle in its war against chip makers.
Rambus, which designs memory chips and chips for Sony’s Playstation, won a jury verdict in the Northern District of California in a suit brought by Hynix, the world’s second largest chip maker, Micron and Nanya alleging Rambus engaged in fraud and anticompetitive behavior. The verdict will allow Rambus to collect a 2006 $134 million jury award against Hynix for patent infringement.
The Hynix suit alleged that Rambus had engaged in fraud and anticompetitive behavior relating to standards setting for dynamic random access memory (DRAM).
Micro has said it will appeal. Hynix is considering an appeal, as is Nanya. If the verdict is upheld on appeal, Rambus could eventually collect billions in royalties. Bloomberg’s Joel Rosenblatt explains more:
Rambus’s victory is a first step toward the firm collecting royalties of $700 million to $11.7 billion because it gives the company leverage to pursue settlements with manufacturers, according to analyst Michael Cohen… Cohen’s $11.7 billion top estimate is based on settlements with all manufacturers on global sales at a running royalty rate of 4.25 percent on chips of the most recent memory types.
[The verdict] allows Rambus to seek an order barring Hynix from selling its chips, and permits it to pursue infringement claims against Micron, Nanya and Seoul-based Samsung Electronics Co., the largest memory-chip manufacturer.