14 DAY TRIAL // Here is a business plan that some might consider twice before putting into practice: create a company that can obtain numerous technology patents and license technologies for which it has no production facilities to work on. Said company will then engage in a number of lawsuits that will be quickly settled through a generous financial agreement. This seems to be the business plan of Rambus, which is back again in court, this time suing NVIDIA for an alleged infringement of 17 patents.
This comes as bad news for the Santa-Clara based graphics manufacturer, since it recently had to deal with a large number of other issues as well. One of the most important of the lot, for instance, was the faulty chips announcement that literally shaved a third of the company's budget. And, to cap it all off, the company is said to be on the verge of losing its position as the leading manufacturer of high-performance graphics cards, once AMD unleashes its new graphics card, dubbed HD 4870 X2.
In the lawsuit against NVIDIA, Rambus claims that "a number of NVIDIA products," including memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR and GDDR3 SDRAM, infringe 17 patents of the Los Altos, California-based company. As a result, Rambus is seeking "injunctive relief barring the infringement, contributory infringement, and inducement to infringe the Rambus patents, as well as monetary damages." Or, in simpler words: money.
"Graphics and multimedia products require leading-edge memory performance, and as NVIDIA advances its product portfolio, it infringes more and more of our patents. We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions. Nevertheless, we hope to continue discussions with NVIDIA to reach a negotiated settlement," said Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus.
NVIDIA isn't the only company that had to deal with Rambus in such a fashion, since Advanced Micro has also seen a fair share of lawsuits pouring in from Rambus. Earlier this year, AMD reached a financial settlement with Rambus and is now paying royalties.