An Infineon Technologies attorney said on Monday that a federal judge has signed a permanent injunction barring Rambus Inc. from filing any future patent infringement lawsuits against Infineon involving double data rate (DDR) SDRAMs made to the JEDEC industry standard.
John Desmarais, Infineon attorney, said that Judge Robert Payne signed the order on Monday at the Federal District Court, located in Richmond, Virginia.
Last spring, the judge allowed stand a jury verdict of fraud against Rambus, barring future suits against Infineon's single data rate SDRAMs. According to Desmarais, he ruled Monday that Rambus' fraud in hiding its pending SDRAM patents from JEDEC during the drafting of an industry SDRAM standard also covered DDR devices that used much of the same technology in the JEDEC specification.
A Rambus spokesman couldn't be contacted in time to comment on the matter.
Last week, a California federal court ruled that Rambus's patents didn't cover SDRAM chips made by Hynix Semiconductor Inc. to the JEDEC standard, according to a Hynix announcement.
Judge Ronald Whyte of the Northern California federal district court stayed the case in his court until a federal appellate court rules late next year or in 2003 on a Rambus motion to overturn the decision that its patents don't cover SDRAMs and DDR chips made to JEDEC specifications.
Meanwhile, Micron Technology Inc. said its suit against Rambus on a similar non-infringement SDRAM claim in Wilimington, Del., federal court is slated for a bench trial starting next April. The net effect of all three court actions is to maintain the status quo with neither Hynhix, Infineon or Micron paying any SDRAM or DDR royalties to Rambus.
Major competitors Samsung Electronics Co., Elpida Memory, and Toshiba Corp., are paying an undisclosed level of SDRAM and DDR royalties, although Rambus itself confirmed earlier this year that at least one of these unidentified licensees has renegotiated its agreement for a single quarterly payment.
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