malwareRambus Inc., one of the world’s premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed memory architectures, today announced that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has granted its request for supplemental damages following an earlier jury verdict finding nine Rambus patents valid and infringed by Hynix SDRAM products. According to the order, Hynix is to pay Rambus royalties of 1% for SDR SDRAM products and 4.25% for DDR SDRAM products made, used, or sold in the United States after December 31, 2005. DDR SDRAM products include DDR SDRAM, DDR2 SDRAM, DDR3 SDRAM, GDDR SDRAM, GDDR2 SDRAM, GDDR3 SDRAM, and DDR SGRAM. These supplemental damages are in addition to those previously awarded in the amount of $133M for Hynix’s infringement through December 31, 2005.
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While the Court denied Rambus’ request for injunctive relief, it did order Rambus and Hynix to negotiate the terms of a compulsory license to allow Hynix to continue to make, use, and sell SDR SDRAM and DDR SDRAM products.

“We are pleased with the Court’s order of supplemental damages,” said Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus. “We believe any compulsory license between the two parties must fairly compensate Rambus for Hynix’s ongoing use of our patented inventions.”

The case with Hynix was originally filed by Hynix against Rambus in August 2000. Judge Whyte split the case into three separate phases with Rambus prevailing in all three phases. Cases are still pending against Hynix, Nanya, Micron, and Samsung in the Northern District of California.

Source: Rambus