The two companies have been involved in a lawsuit over
Infineon’s right to manufacture high speed memory chips without a
patent licence from Rambus.
In August this year, Rambus was found guilty of fraud due to the
non-disclosure of patents and patent applications to the body
responsible for setting the industry standards for designing chips,
standards which are used by Infineon.
The injunction ordered yesterday relates to SDRM (synchronous
dynamic random access memory) and DDR (double data rate) memory
chips. These chips allow fast transfer of data, are more efficient
than the traditional DRAM chips and are becoming the accepted
standard for new PCs. As such, the patents in respect of these
patents represent a significant amount in royalties for the patent
owner.
Meanwhile, in a separate patent dispute between chip companies
Intel and VIA, Intel has lost its claim that its rival was
infringement its copyright. The judge in the case described Intel’s
arguments as “confused.” Intel had alleged that VIA had exceeded
its licence to use Intel’s Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) which
enables 3D graphics to display quickly on ordinary PCs.
