Rambus patents may hang on filing dates

According to EBN's Jack Robertson, the results of the first trial to bring antitrust charges against Rambus Inc. may depend on determining the actual date when the company filed applications for its synchronous-interface patents. That decision, Robertson writes, "will profoundly influence a raging control issue: whether one company or an entire industry owns rights to technology used in virtually every DRAM made today."

On March 20. the jury trial of Rambus Inc. vs. Infineon Technologies AG begins in US District Court in Virginia. Some analysts believe the case may hinge on a reported contradiction concerning the date of Rambus's SDRAM patent application. While the original patent application date was 1990, before its attendance of JEDEC meetings, Rambus says that amendments filed in 1997 and 1998 cover the controversial technologies.

Infineon says Rambus failed to disclose it had filed the SDRAM patent claims during its four years of membership in the Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) from 1992 to 1996. If this can be proven to be true, Rambus patents may be overturned. Rambus says it was not under obligation to discuss its patent applications and did not vote in forums that would have advantaged the company. Some JEDEC officials disagree, saying that there was a stated duty to warn other members, developing their own memory technologies, if they might be in violation of pending Rambus patents.

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