Italian court denies Rambus demand to shut Micron plant

Rambus' attempts to halt production of Micron memory chips that it claims infringe its SDRAM patents have failed - at least in Italy.

The Italian court in Monza yesterday denied Rambus' demand that Micron cease making SDRAM at the latter's plant in Avezzano - a factory Micron acquired from Texas Instruments.

The Italian ruling rejects Rambus' claim that Micron SDRAM infringes the memory technology developer's patents, apparently on the basis that the Micron chips do not utilise a multiplexed bus, a key part of the Rambus patent.

The ruling mirrors US Federal Judge Thomas E Payne's judgement that Infineon's SDRAM didn't violate Rambus patents because it too isn't based on a multiplexed bus. Clearly a precedent has been set, and it's going to make Rambus ongoing actions against Infineon, Micron and Hynix difficult.

Rambus is expected to appeal against the ruling, though as of last night it had yet to respond officially to Micron's victory. Interestingly, a panel of experts convened by the Italian court sided with Rambus.

Had Micron lost the case, it stood to lose millions of dollars a day in lost production. ®

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