"We are very
pleased with today's result – and very thankful for the considered
attention of the jury and the court in this lengthy trial," said
John Danforth, senior vice president and general counsel at
Rambus.
This case was originally filed by Hynix against the Los Altos,
California-based company in August 2000. Hynix sought declaratory
judgments that 11 patents were invalid and not infringed. But
Rambus countersued and eventually the case was expanded to include
Hynix's SDRAM, DDR and DDR2 memory products and 59 patent claims
from 14 Rambus patents.
In pre-trial proceedings, the trial judge granted summary
judgment in favour of Rambus, finding infringement as to 11 of the
original 59 patent claims. The trial judge subsequently permitted
10 patent claims to be presented to the jury at trial, including
two that were the subject of a favourable summary judgment
motion.
The jury in the San Jose division of the US District Court for
the Northern District of California was asked to consider whether
Hynix products infringed the remaining eight claims and to consider
a variety of challenges by Hynix to the validity of all 10 claims.
The jury upheld Rambus' position on each of these issues.
In addition to the still pending Hynix case, Rambus has other
patent cases pending against Micron, Samsung and Nanya, addressing
similar patent claims against similar products, as well as other
issues. Rambus also has a pending patent case against Micron,
Samsung and Nanya addressing, among other things, more advanced
patented technologies as used in more advanced memory products such
as DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3.
In addition to these patent cases, Rambus has a pending
antitrust case against Micron, Hynix and Samsung addressing issues
that include an alleged joint boycott and the alleged use of an
admitted criminal price fixing conspiracy between 1999 and 2002 to
further that joint boycott.
Rambus has also asked for a permanent injunction against Hynix
to stop the manufacture, use, sale, or import to the US of
infringing Hynix memory products. This will be addressed in future
proceedings and will likely await resolution of another phase of
the Hynix case, currently expected to be tried this summer, that
addresses the Hynix counterclaims. Those Hynix counterclaims
include challenges to the enforceability of Rambus patents and
allegations that Rambus defamed DDR SDRAM or otherwise impeded
market adoption of DDR SDRAM.
