Rambus wins Supreme Court battle with Infineon

By Steve Malone

Posted on 8 Oct 2003 at 10:30

I/O systems developer Rambus Inc has won the final legal battle in its long running dispute with Infineon. The United States Supreme Court has turned down Infineon's appeal against the ruling made in the Federal Courts confirming RAMBus's ownership of memory patents.

The Supreme Court also turned down Infineon's claims that Rambus's patents infringe the open standards set by the electronics industry trade body the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). However, Rambus is still facing court action over an allegation that it patented chip designs based on JEDEC standards brought by the Federal Trade Commission.

The ruling will be a big boost to Rambus which has been attempting to collect royalties on its memory interface technology for DDR SRAM chips. Whilst a number of companies such as Toshiba and Samsung have signed licencing agreements, other companies which have been holding out face large bills for payments of back royalties on all patent-infringing products which may go back several years.

Rambus's shares rose to a 52-week high of $29.55 following the news.