Nvidia Found Guilty of Infringing Rambus Patents

Rambus rolls on with its memory technology patents.

In summer 2008, Rambus claimed that "a number of Nvidia products" with memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM infringe upon 17 Rambus patents, leading to the expected lawsuit.

Last Friday, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Nvidia violated three of five patents held by Rambus which could lead to a possible U.S. ban on the import of some Nvidia products.

"We will continue to vigorously protect our patented inventions for the benefit of our shareholders and in fairness to our paying licensees," said Rambus General Counsel Tom Lavelle. "We would be interested in having productive settlement discussions with Nvidia."

Nvidia, expectedly, isn't so eager to set up any sort of payment schedule. According to Reuters, Nvidia is waiting for a decision from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office later this year on whether or not Rambus has full claim to some of the patents involved in the current dispute with Nvidia. If Rambus is found to not have full claim, it would change the outcome of the ITC's ruling considerably.

"We're going to continue to take the necessary steps to move forward with our arguments, not necessarily just with the ITC, but certainly in the Patent and Trademark Office," said David Shannon, Nvidia general counsel.

News of this comes just after Rambus' $900 million settlement with Samsung over patent disagreements.