14 DAY TRIAL // Rambus has sued quite a number of companies, such as NVIDIA, Micron, Hynix and Samsung. When NVIDIA won a victory in its litigation with Rambus back in November, the latter did not seem in any way willing to halt its efforts. In a stunning turn of events, the story of Rambus' legal actions has developed in a rather royalty-bearing way. Samsung has agreed to sign a new license agreement with the company, a pact that implies, among other things, that the latter be paid $900 million.
Samsung and Rambus are signing a cross-license agreement after a long litigation that has been going on ever since the two couldn't reach a common ground when trying to renew an expired license in 2005. The former will be licensing all of the latter's patent portfolio and both of them will start their new collaboration by focusing on graphics and memory-solution development. The two have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring forth this new generation of memory technologies.
“We have a tremendous opportunity to renew a partnership which has created solutions that have benefited consumers worldwide,” Harold Hughes, president and CEO of Rambus, said. “Bringing together Samsung’s market and technology leadership with our innovations for high-performance and high-efficiency memory architectures will make possible an exciting new generation of mobile, computing and consumer electronics products.”
“Any agreement with Samsung is a good agreement because it’s going to force other companies to sign,” Jeff Schreiner, an analyst at the San Diego-based Capstone Investments, said in a telephone interview with BusinessWeek. “We are looking at this as a very positive development.”
The $900 million will be divided into an initial investment of $200 million by Samsung in Rambus stock. In addition, the next five years will have the former pay quarterly royalties of $25 million.
The patent litigations between Rambus and other companies have been going on for a decade. While some analysts seem to think that this settlement will prompt similar royalty payments from the other companies, Micron and Hynix do not see this latest development as capable of influencing their respective litigations.
“We do not anticipate this settlement will have any impact on our ongoing litigation with Rambus,” Micron spokesman Dan Francisco said in an e-mailed statement, according to BusinessWeek. “Micron has always been committed to providing our customers with memory solutions that optimize cost and performance.”
The case against NVIDIA is pending before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington. Findings will be released on January 22.