Court decides in Rambus-Hynix spat

LONDON--A U.S. judge last week dismissed most of Rambus' patent claims against Korea's Hynix Semiconductor, one of the biggest memory manufacturers. Federal Judge Ronald Whyte of United States District Court for the Northern District of California found that Hynix didn't infringe the patents of Rambus in the manufacture of SDRAM and double data rate (DDR) DRAM memory products.

The decision means that Rambus will not be able to charge royalties for these common types of memory. Any charges levied on manufacturers such as Hynix would have been passed on to consumers and businesses who buy the memory, either as separate components or in PCs.

However, the judge also stayed the case until Rambus' parallel case against Infineon Technologies is resolved in a U..S appellate court is resolved.

The judge in the Hynix case granted a Hynix request for a summary judgment based on a ruling last spring that cleared German chipmaker Infineon of patent infringement. The rulings mean that both Infineon and Hynix are now immune from Rambus patent-infringement lawsuits. But the situation could change again when a decision is reached on the Infineon-Rambus appeal, late next year or in 2003.

The case is part of an ongoing legal battle on which Rambus' future could hinge. Rambus memory was introduced as the exclusive memory type for Intel's Pentium 4 chip at the processor's launch, despite criticism that it is too expensive and several embarrassing glitches on Intel's part in adapting the chip to use Rambus memory. --Matthew Broersma, ZDUK