14 DAY TRIAL // Rambus has finally seen the end of the three long years of being under the sharp eye of the European Commission. The technology-licensing company has been under investigation since 2007, when certain DRAM makers filed complaints it, concerning, among other things, Rambus' participation in the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (“JEDEC”), an industry standard-setting organization, from 1992 through 1995.
After similar accusations were investigated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and were found to have been ill-founded back on June 12, 2009, the European Trade Commission revealed its intention to accept Rambus' commitments, following their market testing under the EU law. Per the commitments, Rambus will be offering maximum royalty rates for five-year worldwide licenses of 1.5% for DDR2, DDR3, GDDR3 and GDDR4 SDRAM memory types.
Maximum royalty rates of 1.5% per unit will also be applied for five-year worldwide licenses involving SDR memory controllers through April 2010. After that time, the 1.5% will drop to only 1% and, as far as the licenses for DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory controllers are concerned, royalty rates will be set at 2.65% until April 2010, and at only 2.0% thereafter.
“We are pleased to have this matter closed with the Commission. Following a long and detailed examination of the facts, the Commission did not find that Rambus violated the law, nor did it impose any fine,” Thomas Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus, said.
This settlement will give Rambus one less legal matter to worry about while its patent claims against NVIDIA are still being addressed and with NVIDIA having won a legal victory back in November. The settlement with the Commission could be considered a great relief for the high-speed memory licensing specialist, especially considering that the latter decided to make no finding of liability or issue any fines against the defendant.