Guilty as charged!

We've all been keenly watching those wacky RAMBUS lawyers as they push and prod at Infineon’s alleged patent infringements. Last week Infineon was cleared of any wrongdoing in a battle over RAM patents that date back to the early nineties, when it

We've all been keenly watching those wacky RAMBUS lawyers as they push and prod at Infineon's alleged patent infringements. Last week Infineon was cleared of any wrongdoing in a battle over RAM patents that date back to the early nineties, when it worked on the JEDEC committee that drafted the open SDRAM standard.

As we all know, RAMBUS is notoriously litigious, and has already used its patents to force RAM manufacturers to pay a 3.5 per cent royalty on all DDR RAM and a 0.75 per cent royalty for SDRAM. Infineon fought this and ended up being sued by RAMBUS for allegedly infringing 57 different patents.

Last week Judge Robert 'Max' (as we like to call him) Payne threw 54 of the allegations out, stating that any infringements on the other three would have been unintentional on Infineon's part. Today RAMBUS received the next hit of Payne, coming from the federal court in which a jury ruled on the same matter that RAMBUS was guilty of fraud for not disclosing its patent applications to the JEDEC. Even more, the jury ordered RAMBUS to pay $US3.5 million in damages. While this amount would probably be enough to buy four or five sticks of PC800 RDRAM, it is likely to be reduced on appeal. Unfortunately, as we all know, being reduced on appeal usually means that the amount will end up being roughly equivalent to the price of an - admittedly upsized - Big Mac meal, but it's the principle of the thing that counts.

The moral of the story? Don't sue a rival company unless you are really, REALLY sure you will win.
Rambus
Infineon site