Rambus, a memory technologies licensing company, on Thursday announced that it had received notification from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ordering the rehearing of arguments to take place on October 7, 2010. This follows an initial hearing held in April 2010 in the cases with Hynix Semiconductor and Micron Technology.

Back in the year 2000 both Hynix and Micro alleged Rambus of illegal monopolization of the memory market since Rambus did not notify JEDEC, memory standard setting organization, during its presence at the meetings about its patent-pending technologies and of patenting technologies that it heard about during discussions at JEDEC. In addition, memory makers accuse Rambus of destroying documents that could share the light on the company’s intentions regarding memory technologies, patents and royalties.

The district courts ruled in favour of Micron in January ’09 and in favour of Rambus in April ’09, as a result, Hynix appealed the verdict. It was expected that the rehearing would took place in April ’10, but it takes the court more time to investigate the materials and the hearing will take place only in October, which is not a good sign in general and analysts along with investors claim that it is not a good sign for Rambus in particular. At press time Rambus stock was down nearly 17% to $18.19.

"In spite of this delay, we remain confident in our position. We will vigorously argue our right to defend and be fairly compensated for use of our patented innovations borne of years of work by Rambus scientists and engineers,” said Thomas Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus.

Tags: Rambus, DRAM, Business, Hynix, Micron