Memory

After Intel, Rambus Gets Accused

The European Commission says "Patent Ambush"

By Alexandru Pancescu, Hardware Editor

25th of August 2007, 11:43 GMT

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After the European Commission officially charged Intel with unethical business practices and monopoly behavior, it is now the turn of the computer memory designer and developer Rambus to face charges of "patent ambush" as the company is accused of claiming higher than reasonable royalties from manufacturers that were using its technologies.

Unlike most

computer hardware companies, Rambus is not directly involved in producing or selling a particular piece of hardware but instead it focuses on developing new technologies and then it licenses them to hardware manufacturers. According to the news site xbitlabs, Rambus claims ownership of many technologies that are used in manufacturing random access memory modules found in every single computer ever sold. So, the company is forcing just about every computer memory manufacturer to pay royalties for all the memory chips they produced and sold.

The European Commission released a Statement of Objection saying that Rambus attempted to deceive both JEDEC and the memory manufacturers as it did not disclosed the patents existence until several memory standards were adopted and resulting hardware components were being sold to end customers. According to the European Commission, this type of behavior constitutes a patent ambush and the Rambus company breached several regulations concerning the use of patents. Just like the EC, the Federal Trade Commission (FTCfor short) from USA found Rambus guilty of illegal monopolization and imposed some regulations.

"The issues raised by the European Commission include Rambus' participation in JEDEC that ended over a decade ago. These are largely the same issues examined by a number of US courts, the Federal Trade Commission, and currently before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. We are studying the Statement of Objections and plan to respond in due course," commented Thomas Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus, while saying that the memory developing company will respond to all accusations in a few months.

TAGS:

Rambus | Europe | patent ambush | market | memory

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