Rambus, memory and interface technology licensing company, today announced that the United States Supreme Court has denied Samsung's request for review in the case stemming from the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). In practice this may mean that Samsung Electronics has lost legal battle against Rambus.

In previous rulings, EDVA Judge Robert E. Payne held that the case with Samsung was “exceptional” and attempted to make certain factual findings against Rambus relating to alleged destruction of documents. In April ‘08, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a ruling vacating the order instructing that Samsung's claims against Rambus be dismissed.

With today’s Supreme Court order, all appeals have been exhausted and the matter is now closed.

Earlier this year Rambus said that that a jury of the U.S. District Court in San Jose in the case involving Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technologies and Nanya Technology Corp. has found in favor of Rambus meaning that the court recognized legitimacy or Rambus’ patents. This helped Rambus to overturn the decision of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which found Rambus guilty of monopolizing memory market.

Back in 2006 the FTC found that Rambus withheld information that would have been highly material to the standard-setting process within JEDEC. JEDEC expressly sought information about patents to enable its members to make informed decisions about which technologies to adopt, and JEDEC members viewed early knowledge of potential patent consequences as vital for avoiding patent hold-up.

Samsung accused Rambus of intentionally patenting technologies discussed during JEDEC meetings and also about destroying documents containing business plan of the company that would prove it.

Tags: Samsung, Rambus