The U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled in favor of Rambus this week, concluding that NVIDIA violated several Rambus-owned patents.
Patents 6,470,405; 6,591,353; and 7,287,109 were the subject of the case, which govern several “certain synchronous dynamic random access memory controllers,” that connect memory and graphics. These controllers are found in NVIDIA’s GeForce, Quadro, nForce, Tesla and Tegra lines.
NVIDIA does plan to appeal the ruling in the long run, but in the short term will pay a bond allowing them to continue shipping their products. The bond will be 2.65% of the value of the imports. President Obama will also have to review the decision, and will have the option of repealing it.
Rambus has won many court cases over the last few years, including one against Samsung for $900 million in January. They also have court cases pending with Hynix Semi Conductor Inc. and Micron Technology over dynamic-random access memory, or DRAM. Rambus also has declared that they also intend to file a civil case against NVIDIA for damages, as the ITC cannot award monetary compensation.
Rambus’ victories over NVIDIA and Samsung have clearly shown that they are a force to be reckoned with, and it’s likely that other companies will think twice about tangoing with them.
“A whole bunch of other companies that were watching this will now likely sign licensing deals,” analyst Jeff Schreiner with Capstone Investments commented.
It appears that the market has been watching as well—Rambus stocks rose 7.2% this morning, whereas NVIDIA’s stock fell 1.1%.
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