by Anna Filatova
05/22/2002 | 02:08 PM
On June 3 Infineon and Rambus are expected to start another round in court. This round might become very remarkable for two reasons: firstly, it may turn out the last one in this trial, and secondly, it may be the beginning of Rambus’ end.
As you remember, last November (see this news story) Virginia Federal Court resolution was completely in Infineon’s favour. The only thing that Infineon’s lawyers failed to prove were fraud charges against Rambus during the development of DDR SDRAM standards (as for SDRAM, Rambus was found guilty). Now the companies will have to return to the court for the next session. Rambus will try to prove that they have never been into fraud and that all patents of theirs were obtained absolutely legally. Infineon in its turn will try to convince the court that they should make the “right” decision regarding DDR SDRAM. As you understand, there has been a precedent already, so Infineon has every chance to win the case and to start crushing Rambus (after dismissal of Rambus’ appeal the negative resolutions will start streaming down on Rambus as from a horn of plenty, no doubt).<%BANNER[article]%>
By the way, it is totally not in Rambus’ favour that the USA Federal Trade Committee (FTC) is about to start an investigation (see this news story) about misappropriation by Rambus of the intellectual property, which belonged to JEDEC member companies (this is actually what Infineon is accusing Rambus of). Although this is all unofficial info, there is nothing positive for Rambus anyway...