Samsung Electronics becomes alert when it feels the threat of being dragged through courts especially since these lawsuits might burn a hole in their budget. Lately, Rambus, a memory module producer, has spent most of its time in court, threatening Hynix Semiconductor, Nanya Technology and Micron Technology, and even Infineon Technologies.

Still, the latest target acquired by Rambus is none other than Samsung, a company whose profits were boosted last year by large sales of DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) and NAND flash memory.

Rambus has decided to sue the Korean company over the infringement of 25 patents and has asked for significant compensatory damages and for the paying of copyrights fees for the DDR technology, it claims to have invented. Samsung is returning the favor and throws Rambus in a series of lawsuits which question the authenticity of four of the patents related to memory technologies. Samsung demands that these patents are invalidated.

The motivation for making such demands relies in the accusations that Rambus used its position as member of a commission that approves certain chip standards to get those patents. Moreover, Samsung accuses Rambus of destroying relevant evidence and of using the patents against the very commission that approved them.