Rambus

Rambus

Heavy legal defeat for the California chip company Rambus technology: The former stock market favorite, who wants to earn his money, especially with the licensing of proprietary and patented subject, after more than seven years of litigation against DRAM manufacturer Micron and Hynix. In May 2004, several Rambus memory chip manufacturers, including the above, sued for anticompetitive behavior and violation of the antitrust laws of the United States in California. Rambus accused the companies that they had banded together to thwart the success of Direct Rambus memory. This according to standards of the time very fast RDRAM Intel had selected from the year 1999 for Pentium III and Pentium 4 platforms. But the launch began with RDRAM margins, the technique was less than hoped for advantages, and the prices of RDRAM memory module (RIMM) remained significantly higher than the DIMMs with PC133 and later DDR266 SDRAM.

Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, according to Rambus on Wednesday decided by a jury of nine votes to three against Rambus. While Micron said in a statement, the jury was in the process of their own reasoning followed, is the Rambus decision is more likely than an acquittal for lack of evidence: This does not have the necessary for an antitrust lawsuit had proof strength. Rambus repeated the allegation that several chip manufacturers had conspired and lowered the first DDR SDRAM prices artificially in order to "increase by up to 500 percent" after the defeat of RDRAM. According to Rambus CEO Harold Hughes checked his company's options for appeal.
Micron is expected to be different because the facts: The company makes "technical defects, higher manufacturing costs and other disadvantages of RDRAM and the Rambus business practices of the company" for the failure of the Direct Rambus memory responsible. How about later in the launch of DDR2 memory, Intel had invested in 1998 a half-billion dollars in Micron to accelerate the development of RDRAM. Nevertheless, Micron delivered no later Rambus memory chips. Instead, Rambus and Micron mired in years of legal battles over patents mainly. However, while companies like Samsung and Infineon agreed with Rambus and paid, are some choices between Micron and Rambus pending.

Rambus shares lost on Wednesday around 60 percent of their value. Micron's shares on the other hand increased by more than 20 percent, although DRAM manufacturers face lower prices currently are in a difficult situation.

Rambus