WASHINGTON -- Rambus Inc. has filed a patent infringement suit against Infineon Technologies AG in the U.S. District Count in Richmond, Va., as part of its ongoing campaign to get memory companies to license its synchronous DRAM technology.
The suit, filed this week, is expected to set of a major fight with Munich-based Infineon reportedly considering its own lawsuit against Rambus to enforce its patent rights in synchronous memory technology. Industry observers said Rambus' move to strike first will set in motion a test case for the validity of the company's claims in synchronous memory patents, which have been used to reach new licensing and royalty agreements with Oki Electric, Toshiba, and Hitachi.
In those new agreements, announced in the past two months, Rambus receives high royalties for use of its patents in SDRAMs, double data rate (DDR) memories, and controllers interfacing those chips. Rambus says those royalties are at higher rates than what it gets for licenses of its Direct Rambus format. Rambus officials have vowed to pursue royalties payments for its patents on all types of fast DRAMs and controllers (see June 23 story).
"We filed suit after we thought negotiations with Infineon had broken down," said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of worldwide marketing for Rambus in Mountain View, Calif. "Since then negotiations have resumed and we are hopeful of reaching a settlement," he said in an interview late Fridat afternoon.
But sources said Infineon has held off filing its own lawsuit, fearing possible adverse reaction to a foreign chip giant attacking a smaller U.S. technology firm. Infineon's concerns are now moot, with Rambus taking the German DRAM maker to court first.
As previously reported, an ad hoc industry group of major memory firms, chip set makers and some system houses has been meeting to draft a strategy for attacking the Rambus synchronous patents. The options include the possibility of filing an antitrust complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against Rambus. In an FTC complaint, Rambus would be accused of trying to restrain trade by allegedly patenting data that it obtained as a participant in meetings with the Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) to debate synchronous memory standards. Rambus officials in Mountain View, Calif., deny such charges.
Some sources said Rambus has escalated its campaign to obtain royalties from synchronous memory patents as Intel Corp. shift its memory strategy for Pentium 4 from only supporting Direct Rambus memories. As previously reported, Intel is developing its own chip set to support SDRAM memories for the next mainstream PC desktop Pentium 4, which is set to be unveiled in mid-2001.
Analyst Bert McComas, head of InQuest Research in Gilbert, Ariz., said last month that Intel's decision to use SDRAM memories for Pentium 4 could spell major trouble for Direct Rambus. He also said he had obtained a roadmap that showed Intel planning to introduce a 1.4-GHz Pentium III (code-named Tualatin) next year. McComas has posted the Intel roadmap on his web site, located at http://www.Inqst.com.
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