Rambus Wins $306.5M in Damages Against Hynix

A jury has found that Hynix Semiconductor violated a series of Rambus patents and awarded Rambus US$306.5 million in damages.

The jury determined that Hynix infringed on the 10 Rambus patent claims debated in the trial, held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Rambus announced Monday.

The damages are compensation for synchronous dynamic RAM, double data rate SDRAM and DDR2 memory products sold by Hynix in the United States only between June 2000 and the end of 2005, according to court documents.

Hynix said it would continue to fight in the case.

“While disappointed at the result, the focus of this phase of the trial was Rambus’ patents that were drafted to cover JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard SDR and DDR SDRAMs,” the company said in a statement. “The next phase will focus on Rambus’ anti-competitive behavior in acquiring and enforcing these patents. In the next phase, scheduled for this summer, Hynix seeks to have all of Rambus’s patents in dispute held unenforceable.”

Still pending is a Rambus request for a permanent injunction barring Hynix from making, using, selling or importing infringing memory products. That request will likely be addressed in “future proceedings,” after a trial expected later this year when Hynix counterclaims will be heard, according to Rambus.

Rambus has a smattering of pending patent litigation, including cases against Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics and Nanya Technology, which revolve around similar claims as the ones in the Hynix trial, as well as around other memory technologies.

-Juan Carlos Perez and Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

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