14 DAY TRIAL // Rambus is one of those companies that don't make products but own patents and often sue other companies over alleged infringement, but it looks like its own record isn't really spotless either.
To put it in layman terms, Rambus has a habit of stocking up on patents and then waiting until a product supposedly infringing them is successful.
Once that is done, it starts legal proceedings against those companies in order to get financial settlements or paid legal damages.
Patent trolling is the colloquial term that has come to be widespread on the Internet for this behavior.
Rambus is definitely not the only such company, but it stands apart from the fold through the fact that it has been reasonably successful in its campaigns.
Back in early 2010, for instance, it managed to get $900 million from Samsung, along with a licensing deal.
Currently, Rambus is locked in a number of lawsuits with NVIDIA and others.
Ironically, though, it just had to pay someone else for much the same sort of allegation itself often raises.
A stockholder, investor Stuart J. Steele, began a lawsuit against it back in 2008, claiming that Rambus had incorrectly dated and accounted for stock option grants prior to 2006 (during the 1998-2006 period).
It turns out that the patent company decided to settle out of court, so it paid the man $10.85 million.
In other words, it didn't expect to win the case, which goes to show that it is guilty of things similar to what it accuses NVIDIA, Hynix and many others of.
Speaking of Hynix, last month, it and Micron were found not to have actually caused the downfall of Rambus' RDRAM technology, much to the plaintiff's chagrin.
That makes this new $10.85 million settlement the second slap on the wrist within little over a month.