Supreme Court won't hear Rambus-Infineon case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday boosted Rambus Inc.'s almost four-year battle to collect royalties from makers of memory chips that the company says use patented Rambus high-speed memory interface technology in their products.

The nation's highest court denied a request to review an appeal's court decision that favored Rambus over Infineon Technologies AG, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said. Infineon is a Munich-based semiconductor maker that disputes Rambus' claims that it is entitled to collect the royalties in question.

The Supreme Court's denial thus upholds the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling, issued in January 2003, and sends the case back to the lower court for a new trial, a spokeswoman for Los Altos, California-based Rambus said Monday.

"Today's rulings help substantiate the importance of our past inventions and allow us to continue our focus on technology leadership," said Geoff Tate, Rambus' chief executive officer, in a statement.

Infineon said it will be ready for the new trial. "It is regrettable that the Court will not hear arguments in these matters, despite the evidence presented in the appeal and the separate briefs filed with the Court by representatives of commercial organizations and 15 states. The case now will be decided, again, by jury trial in the Federal Court for Virginia and we intend to vigorously pursue a full and fair resolution," Infineon said in a statement e-mailed to IDG News Service.

In May 2001, the lower court -- the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Richmond -- threw out all Rambus claims of patent infringement against Infineon related to SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random access memory) and DDR SDRAM (double data-rate SDRAM). This decision was a response to the lawsuit Rambus had filed against Infineon.

That court also found Rambus guilty of fraud for obtaining patents on chip designs standards which were being developed at the time by the memory standards group JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council), of which Rambus was a member, and fined the company US$3.5 million. This decision was in response to an Infineon countersuit.

In Oct. 2001, the lower court later refined its decisions on the Infineon countersuit, reducing the fraud fine to $350,000 and determining that Rambus had committed fraud with regards to SDRAM but not with regards to DDR SDRAM. The lower court also forbid Rambus from pursuing litigation in the U.S. against Infineon's JEDEC-compliant SDRAM memory products.

The lower court's actions were a blow to the crusade Rambus had launched in early 2000 to collect royalties from its SDRAM and DDR SDRAM patents.

However, the appeals court's decision in January 2003 deflated Infineon's victory by confirming the breadth of Rambus' patent claims, which the lower court had narrowed, and determining Rambus had committed no fraud.

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