Rambus today announced that it has filed an anti-trust suit in the Superior Court of the State of California against numerous leading semiconductor makers accusing them in the failure of some of the company’s technologies.

In the suit, Rambus charges that defendants Hynix Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies, Micron Technology and Siemens AG engaged in a concerted and unlawful effort to eliminate competition and stifle innovation in the market for computer memory technology and computer memory chips.

“From substantial written evidence already in the public record, we believe that these memory manufacturers colluded illegally, thereby limiting consumer choice and depriving our RDRAM products of the opportunity to compete fairly in the marketplace,” said John Danforth, senior vice president and general counsel for Rambus.

The 36-page complaint filed today relies in substantial part on evidence obtained through a Federal Trade Commission proceeding and asserts four causes of action:

• Conspiracy to restrict output and fix prices in violation of the Cartwright Act;
• Conspiracy to monopolize in violation of the Cartwright Act;
• Intentional interference with prospective economic advantage;
• Unfair competition in violation of California Business and Professions Code Section 17200

Micron Technology, responded to the lawsuit by Rambus. Micron said it had not seen the suit but stated it would defend any lawsuit vigorously.

“Micron builds products to meet the demands of its customers”, noted Dave Parker, Micron's Director of Corporate Communications.

“Rambus failed in the marketplace because of excessive manufacturing costs and minimal RDRAM demand. Several memory manufacturers, including the world’s largest, continue to produce RDRAM products sufficient to meet its limited, worldwide market demand. It is unfortunate that Rambus is trying to blame the market failure of its RDRAM technology on others, like Micron, who ultimately responded to marketplace demands,” Mr. Parker stated.

To get licensing fees from DRAM makers Rambus is continuously trying to prove that the key-technologies used in SDRAM and DDR SDRAM memory types were originally developed by Rambus. While some companies pay the fees now, some others, including Micron, Hynix, Infineon do not pay royalties to Rambus.