Rambus' Legal Wrangling with Samsung Deepens

Online Staff -- Electronic News, 6/16/2005

The Los Altos, Calif.-based memory IP supplier said Wednesday that it was adding Korean DRAM giant to its federal antitrust suit against fellow DRAM players Hynix and Micron.

This comes just a few weeks after Rambus sued Samsung in federal court on the West Coast for patent infringement. Samsung subsequently sued Rambus in federal court on the East Coast seeking to have four Rambus patents declared invalid. Those same patents were the ones at issue in Rambus' previous litigation with European DRAM maker Infineon Technologies.

Samsung is also challenging the enforceability of the four Rambus patents on grounds that Rambus allegedly spoliated relevant documents and misused information from JEDEC.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, Rambus said it was also adding Samsung to its antitrust suit against other DRAM makers, originally filed in 2004. The case alleges a continuing conspiracy beginning in the mid-to-late 1990s in which Hynix, Micron -- and now Samsung -- conspired illegally, among other things, to share cost and pricing data and eliminate Rambus’ RDRAM memory design from the market.

In the latest in that case, a federal judge dismissed a motion by defendants to dismiss the case.