A US federal jury this week found Rambus guilty of fraud in its efforts to claim rights to a popular memory technology, but the company vows to fight on.
In a major setback for Rambus, a jury awarded US$3.5 million to German chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG.
The ruling was a stinging rebuke for Rambus, which initiated the litigation in US District Court, accusing Infineon of infringing on patents related to synchronous DRAM, a memory technology found in most PCs today, and double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM.
While Rambus is known for its self-branded technology, called RDRAM, currently packaged with Intel 's Pentium 4 processors, the company also claims its patents cover the more widely used and less-costly SDRAM.
Last week, Rambus lost an important judgment when the court dismissed its patent infringement claims against Infineon, a ruling Rambus immediately appealed.
This week, the court heard Infineon's countersuit, in which the German company accused Rambus of having improperly based its patents on information it obtained from trade group meetings to develop open industry standards.
The meetings were held during the early '90s by the Joint Electronic Devices Engineering Council.
"We said that Rambus attended JEDEC meetings and then drafted the (patent) claims onto the JEDEC standard intentionally, and the jury agreed with us," said John Desmarais of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which represents Infineon.
Rambus said it would appeal the fraud ruling and planned to continue pursuing legal action against memory makers to enforce its patents.
"We will vigorously defend our patent rights against any company that attempts to use our innovations without compensation," said Geoff Tate, the company's CEO, in a statement issued after the verdict.
In rejecting the fraud ruling, Tate also admitted that rules governing the JEDEC meetings were "confusing."
"Rambus abided by JEDEC's rules," Tate said, "despite the fact that these rules have been shown to be confusing, conflicting, poorly communicated and generally not complied with by other JEDEC members."
This isn't the first time memory makers have accused Rambus of abusing its access to JEDEC meetings.
In March 2000, Hitachi Ltd. laid out similar allegations in a countersuit after Rambus took the Tokyo-based company to court over claims of patent infringements.
"Instead of participating in the JEDEC standard-setting process in good faith, Rambus subverted the process," Hitachi claimed in its filing at the time.
But the case was settled out of court, with Hitachi agreeing to make undisclosed royalty payments. Analysts speculated that Hitachi was pressured to settle in order to clear the way for a merger of its DRAM business unit with NEC
Over the last year, Rambus also secured contracts with Samsung, NEC, Toshiba and Oki Electric.
