In a ploy closely mirroring an Intel legal strategy, Rambus yesterday filed a suit with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in an attempt to prevent Hitachi from importing its memory into the US, reports Semiconductor Business News. At the same time, Rambus also filed an action against Sega, which uses Hitachi memories in its Dreamcast console. Rambus already has an existing legal action pending, which alleges that Hitachi uses some of its technology in memory chips it makes. The paradoxical part of that case is that most of the other big memory companies in the world use similar technology to Hitachi, implying that they too infringe Rambust patents. The patent in question refers to clock timing, but, SBN reports, the suit filed with the ITC specifically mentions not just SDRAM and double data rate (DDR) memory, but also Hitachi microprocessors. Intel filed a complaint to the ITC back in late January, requesting that the US government prevent imports of Via chipsets. Intel alleges that its patents are infringed by Via, and has also pursued independent legal action against Via and associated companies in a number of different countries. Rambus appears hell-bent on ensuring that its own memory technology eventually wins the day, despite a number of setbacks which mean that, so far, it has little market share. On the Intel x86 platform, many third party companies, including semiconductor and motherboard firms, do not care to use Rambus memory in their designs. ® See Also The SBN story can be found here