Rambus to challenge Infineon injunction

Rambus will appeal against Judge Robert Payne's ruling that it may not pursue future DDR SDRAM-oriented intellectual property infringement violations against Infineon, the memory technology developer pledged yesterday.

Judge Payne's decision was announced by Infineon on Monday. It follows from a previous ruling, made in the Virginia District Court earlier this year, that forbids Rambus from attempting to sue Infineon again for alleged infringement of its single-data-rate SDRAM patents.

Rambus was found guilty of deliberately hiding its single-data-rate patents from the JEDEC committee working on an industry-standard SDRAM specification. Its action was judged to be fraudulent, and as a consequence it was barred from seeking to sue anyone who it claimed violated those patents by implementing the JEDEC standard.

However, the ruling did not prohibit future claims against Infineon that it infringed Rambus' double-data-rate SDRAM patents. Infineon's lawyers claimed that since said intellectual property derived from the single-data-rate patents, the German chip maker should be protected from DDR-centred actions too.

Not so, claims Rambus, which believes Judge Payne's latest ruling is just the latest in a long line of judgements based on "errors of law and fact".

"[Monday's] order builds upon and adds to a series of reversible errors previously made by the same court," said Rambus general counsel John Danforth. "These include clear errors of law and fact that are the subject of a pending Rambus appeal for which Rambus has already filed its opening brief.

"The breadth of [Monday's] order amplifies these earlier mistakes and adds further reversible errors that Rambus will separately contest."

Rambus' appeal against Judge Payne's original SDRAM ruling is expected to commence late 2002/early 2003. ®

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