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Micron Technologies v. Rambus

On Monday, August 28, 2000, Micron Technology, Inc. of Boise, Idaho filed suit against Rambus Inc of Mountain View, California in US District Court in Delaware. According to the press release issued by Micron Technology, The suit asserts violations of the Federal antitrust laws, and also asserts invalidity, non-infringement, and non-enforceability of Rambus patents pursuant to a number of different bases

We were able to gain access to certain confidential documents, including a transcript of the complaint submitted by Richards, Layton & Finger to the District Court in Delaware. While we honor the confidential nature of the documents, it is our goal to set into perspective the issues brought forth by Micron Technology based on the view presented by the plaintiff.

The last 6 months have seen a variety of rather strange legal maneuvers centering around the DRAM industry. Most of the legal activities were initiated by Mountain View, CA - based Rambus Inc. who hold patents towards their proprietary design RDRAM or Rambus DRAM. Briefly, Rambus claims to hold patents on synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) and has sued several SDRAM manufacturers in order to collect royalties and / or licensing fees. The first wave of law suit targeted mainly Japanese SDRAM manufactures with the result that Hitachi gave in to Rambus’ claims and agreed to pay Rambus the fees asked for.

One may view this epsiode as either a test case or precedent for further suing of the remaining SDRAM industry and, in fact, this is the way of Rambus would like to protrait the outcome of the negotiations. What leaked out afterwards, however, was that, in exchange for the legal surrender, Hitachi received some extremely favorable treatment from Rambus in form of a rather limited time concession to pay fees for their memory products.

Nonetheless, regardless of what is going on behind the scenes, the outcome of a lawsuits sets a precendent. A precendent, in turn, can be used to cause a Domino Effect, breaking the phalanx of the remaining SDRAM manufacturers around the world. Therefore, irrespective of what happened during breakfast talks, the Rambus vs. Hitachi case was an important milestone in the legal battle over memory patent rights and royalties.

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