Posted 06/09/09 at 02:21:06 PM by Paul Lilly

Rambus doesn't appear to be doing too well with its legal battle against Nvidia, and while the company hasn't given up entirely, it did ask the International Trade Commission to drop four of its patent infringement claims against the GPU maker. In addition, Rambus also asked for termination of several claims from a fifth patent, all of which date back to a November 2008 complaint.

"We are pleased Rambus has recognized the weakness of these patents and claims," said David Shannon, Nvidia executive vice president and general counsel in a statement. "These withdrawals represent essentially half of the patents and one third of the claims asserted against us, and we look forward to addressing the remainder of the case."

Exactly what will remain in the case remains to be seen, but before the withdrawals, the original complaint included nine alleged patent violations all involving memory controllers as used on Nvidia's graphics cards.

Read More

Posted 02/05/09 at 04:00:00 AM by Paul Lilly

Rambus investors have found themselves riding a financial roller coaster filled with ups and downs contingent upon how the technology company fares in court. If you happen to be one of those investors, you better refill your Dramamine prescription. That's because a U.S. federal judge this week postponed indefinitely patent infringement cases filed by Rambus against several rival memory chip makers. News of the legal setback sent Rambus' shares hurtling downwards 22 percent in after-hours trading.

The defendants argued for the delay following Judge Sue L. Robinson's ruling on January 9 that the patent suit against Micron Technologies is "unenforceable" and that "spoliation" of evidence occurred.

"We are pleased that Judge Whyte recognized that the Delaware Court's unenforceability ruling impacts the patents asserted by Rambus in the California matter, and that he stayed Rambus' patent case against Micron," Micron general counsel Rod Lewis said in a statement. "We believe that Judge Robinson's thorough decision will be upheld on appeal."

Not surprisingly, Rambus holds a decidedly different opinion of the ruling. "While we are disappointed with the stay of the coordinated cases, it our expectation that the conflicting opinions of the district courts regarding document spoliation will go up together on appeal," Tom Lavelle, Rambus general counsel, said in a statement.

Read More

Posted 01/11/09 at 11:57:38 AM by Justin Kerr

The runaway train wreck of memory lawsuits started by Rambus may finally be coming to an end. In a U.S. District Court, Judge Sue L. Robinson has ruled that Rambus’s patent suit against Micron Technologies is “unenforceable”. In her ruling she specifically cites “spoliation”, which is defined as the “destruction or alteration of evidence”. Essentially Rambus has been accused of failing to preserve documents that could be admitted as evidence. This news comes as an incredible relief to Micron Technologies, the single largest U.S. manufacturer of memory chips. Though this ruling is specific to the Micron case, if it holds up in the inevitable appeal, several other companies facing Rambus lawsuits such as Nvidia, Samsung, Hitachi, and Hynix may also be spared.

Judge Robinson also voiced her disapproval for Rambus’s aggressive tactics by using lawsuits against competitors. In her ruling she quotes a specific email from September 29^th 1999 whereby the author declares the “need to sue a dram company to set an example”. The email also specifically states that they should attempt to publicize the patents and lawsuits to “put all dram/controller companies that use sdram/ddr….on notice.”

Rambus has publically denounced the ruling and according to senior vice president Tom Lavelle, “"We respectfully, but strongly, disagree with this opinion, and at the appropriate juncture plan to appeal." "This opinion is highly inconsistent with the findings of the Court in the Northern District of California which looked at the same conduct and found there was nothing improper with our document retention practices. We are confident in the strength of our position and will continue to vigorously pursue fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions."

Is Rambus just a patent trolling?

Read More

Posted 12/05/08 at 03:39:41 PM by Paul Lilly

If Rambus could find a way to take people to court just for using the word 'memory,' we have little doubt it would. In the meantime, the legal beagles at Rambus have set their sights on Nvidia and has been granted its request by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to investigate the GPU maker, along with any company using Nvidia products beleived to be infringing.

"In its complaint, Rambus has alleged infringement of nine Rambus patents," Rambus wrote in a press release. "The accused products include NVIDIA products that incorporate DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, GDDR, GDDR2, and GDDR3 memory controllers, including graphics processors, and media and communications processors."

The dispute over Nvidia's products isn't a new one and dates back to July, when Rambus accused Nvidia of violating 17 patents covering chipsets, graphics processors, and media communication processors. At the time, Rambus claimed it had spent six years trying to sell Nvidia a license to use its technology, and wanted an injunction preventing Nvidia from selling allegedly infringing products.

Read More

Posted 11/28/08 at 11:01:32 AM by Paul Lilly

Earlier this year, a jury ruled that Rambus, a designer and licensor of memory chips, did not obtain patents for memory technology through fraud or anti-competitive means. The ruling essentially gave Rambus the right to continue its practice of suing anyone and everyone involved in memory production that isn't already paying the company royalties.

Among those companies are Samsung, the world's largest memory-chip maker, Hynix, the second largest memory chip producer, Micron, and Nanya. And each of them will have to defend against claims of wrongdoing as Rambus has won a pretrial ruling alleging chipmakers infringed on one claim of a patent in a case scheduled to go to trial on January 19, 2009.

According to Jeff Schreiner, an analyst at San Diego-based Capstone Investments, the ruling by U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte means that Whyte "already found one claim for Rambus that they won't have to argue." In the past, Whyte has denied Rambus' requests for similar pretrial rulings over 10 other elements of its patents. Those previous claims, which cover alleged infringement on both DDR2 and DDR3 technology, will also be argued during the January trial.

Read More

Posted 08/26/08 at 11:12:02 AM by Paul Lilly

Rambus, the company most known for its rampage of patent lawsuits on all things memory, may soon be better known for something else. The company announced a Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative last year, in which it set a goal of developing a future memory architecture capable of delivering a terabyte per second of memory bandwidth to a single System-on-Chip (SoC), and Rambus showed at IDF that it's getting ever closer to that goal.

On display was a DRAM emulator pushing 16Gbps, a key hurdle in making a terabyte of bandwidth possible. However, the test chips were only single channel, putting a slight damper on the display. Still, if Rambus can bring to fruition its new memory architecture, which it looks to be well on its way to doing, it could usher in a new era of high performance memory products.

Read More

Posted 07/11/08 at 02:30:50 PM by Chris Moody

Rambus, the technology company turned responsible for RDRAM has filed suit against Nvidia claiming that they violated 17 of its memory patents. Rambus’ lawsuit alleges that at least six of Nvidia's product lines infringe the Rambus patents including chip sets, graphics processors and applications processors. They ask for an injunction that would prevent Nvidia from selling the products as well as damages.

Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus was quoted as saying, "For more than six years, we have diligently attempted to negotiate a licensing agreement with Nvidia, but our good faith efforts have been to no avail," he adds, "We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions,".

Can you smell the bull? I better get my rubber boots it’s getting thick. His own statement shows this to be an attempt to force Nvidia to cough up something to make Rambus go away and they haven't been interested. Nvidia has yet to comment on the suit.

Read on to hear more about the Patent Troll.

Read More