Rambus stabs Samsung in the back

Samsung Electronics, one of the major players in the memory modules' industry, has been sued by Rambus Inc, a technology company from US. The charges brought against the Korean manufacturer refer to a patent infringement situation, regarding several of the memory modules manufactured by it under license from Rambus.

In fact, Samsung is the defendant in two separate law suits. In the first one, the Koreans are accused of using 14 inventions patented by Rambus in the development of the DDR2 memory devices and GDDR2 and GDDR3 graphics memory devices.

In the second law suit, Rambus asserts the infringement of 11 patents in the case of the SDRAM and DDR DRAM memory and controller products.

"While we have regarded Samsung as a valuable licensee of our patents for certain applications, a number of issues now exist that have made the renewal and expansion of the Samsung SDRAM/DDR license difficult. These issues have caused us to terminate that license prior to its scheduled June 30, 2005 end date. We continue to value our relationship with Samsung as one of the primary manufacturers of memory using our XDR(TM) DRAM and RDRAM(R) designs" declared Harold Hughes, chief executive director of Rambus.