NVIDIA Licenses Rambus Patents, Lawsuit Still Rages

NVIDIA and Rambus have been locked in a patent litigation for a while, but the verdict given by the ITC late last month seems to have finally tipped the scales, giving Rambus an apparent advantage that appears to have persuaded NVIDIA to license some of its patents, though the licensing company still hasn't dropped charges.

Rambus has been claiming that many of NVIDIA's products infringe some of its patents, and while some were found invalid, the others were found enforceable.

The lawsuit itself was started back in 2008 and has seen several rulings and appeals on both the part of the plaintiff and that of the accused.

This prompted the ITC to issue a ruling that expresses its intention to issue a Limited Exclusion Order which bars the importation of Respondents' infringing products into the United States.

Following these developments, NVIDIA did not exactly come out and say much, but it is now revealed that it has signed an agreement with the licensing company.

Under the terms of the pact, Rambus will allow the Santa Clara, California-based GPU maker to utilize its technology.

In return, NVIDIA will pay royalties of 1% for SDR memory controllers and 2% for other memory controllers it may happen to implement.

The list includes DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4, and portions of GDDR5 controllers.

For the most part, this should prevent any further antitrust litigation from arising between the two and will likely boost Rambus' revenues by a fair margin.

On the other hand, and quite ironically, this pact did not convince Rambus to drop its current charges, which means that the legal mess is still going strong.

Obviously, Rambus intends to squeeze as much financial resources as possible out of this situation. It remains to be seen how the relationship between the two evolves.