Patent lawsuits
In 2000, Rambus began filing lawsuits against the largest memory manufacturers, claiming that it owned SDRAM and DDR technology. Seven manufacturers, including Samsung, quickly settled with Rambus and agreed to pay royalties on SDRAM and DDR memory. In May 2001, Rambus was found guilty of fraud for having claimed that it owned SDRAM and DDR technology, and all infringement claims against memory manufacturers were dismissed. In January 2003, the CAFC overturned the fraud verdict of the jury trial in Virginia under Judge Payne, issued a new claims construction, and remanded the case back to Virginia for re-trial on infringement. In October 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Thus, the case returned to Virginia per the CAFC ruling.
In January 2005, Rambus filed four more lawsuits against memory chip makers Hynix Semiconductor, Nanya Technology, Inotera Memories and Infineon Technology claiming that DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3 chips contain Rambus technology. In March 2005, when Rambus was accused of shredding key documents prior to court hearings, the judge agreed and dismissed Rambus's case against Infineon. This led Rambus to negotiate a settlement with Infineon, which agreed to pay Rambus quarterly license fees of $5.9 million and in return, both companies ceased all litigation against each other. The agreement ran from November 2005 to November 2007. After this date, if Rambus had enough remaining agreements in place, Infineon could make extra payments up to $100 million. In June 2005, Rambus also sued one of its strongest proponents, Samsung, the world's largest memory manufacturer, and terminated Samsung's license. Samsung had promoted Rambus's RDRAM and currently remains a licensee of Rambus's XDR memory.
In February 2006, Micron Technology sued Rambus, alleging that Rambus had violated RICO and deliberately harmed Micron.[29]
On April 29, 2008, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling vacating the order of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, saying the case with Samsung should be dismissed, saying Judge Robert E. Payne's findings critical of Rambus, were on a case that had already been settled, and thus had no legal standing.[30]
On January 9, 2009, a Delaware federal judge ruled that Rambus could not enforce patents against Micron Technology Inc., stating that Rambus had a "clear and convincing" show of bad faith, and ruled that Rambus' destruction of key related documents (spoliation of evidence) nullified its right to enforce its patents against Micron.[31]
In July 2009, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected 8 claims by Rambus against Nvidia.[32]
On November 24, 2009, the USPTO rejected all 17 claims in three Rambus patents that the company asserted against Nvidia in a complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). However the ITC announced that out of five patents, Nvidia did violate three of them. Due to this ruling Nvidia faced a potential U.S. import ban on some of its chips used in the nForce, Quadro, GeForce, Tesla, and Tegra series graphics products—nearly every video card type manufactured by Nvidia.[33]
On June 20, 2011, Rambus went to trial against Micron and Hynix in California, seeking as much as $12.9 billion in damages for "a secret and unlawful conspiracy to kill a revolutionary technology, make billions of dollars and hang onto power", Rambus lawyer Bart Williams told jurors.[34] Rambus lost on November 16, 2011, when the San Francisco County Superior Court jury ruled against Rambus in a 9–3 vote, and its shares dropped drastically, from $14.04 to $4.00 per share.[35][36]
On January 24, 2012, a USPTO appeals board declared the third of three patents known as the "Barth patents" invalid. The first two had been declared invalid in September 2011. Rambus had used these patents to win infringement lawsuits against Nvidia Corp and Hewlett-Packard.[37] However, on June 28, 2013, The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the USPTO and the '109 Barth patent's validity was reinstated: "In conclusion, the Board's determination that all 25 claims of the '109 Patent are invalid as anticipated by Farmwald is not supported by substantial evidence. Accordingly, this court reverses."[38]
Federal Trade Commission antitrust suits
In May 2002, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed charges against Rambus for antitrust violations. Specifically, the FTC complaint asserted that through the use of patent continuations and divisionals, Rambus pursued a strategy of expanding the scope of its patent claims to encompass the emerging SDRAM standard. The FTC's antitrust allegations against Rambus went to trial in the summer of 2003 after the organization formally accused Rambus of anti-competitive behavior the previous June, itself the result of an investigation launched in May 2002 at the behest of the memory manufacturers. The FTC's chief administrative-law judge, Stephen J. McGuire, dismissed the antitrust claims against Rambus in 2006, saying that the memory industry had no reasonable alternatives to Rambus technology and was aware of the potential scope of Rambus patent rights, according to the company. Soon after, FTC investigators filed a brief to appeal against that ruling.
On August 2, 2006, the FTC overturned McGuire's ruling, stating that Rambus illegally monopolized the memory industry under section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and also practiced deception that violated section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.[39]
February 5, 2007, the FTC issued a ruling that limits maximum royalties that Rambus may demand from manufacturers of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), which was set to 0.5% for DDR SDRAM for 3 years from the date the commission's Order is issued and then going to 0; while SDRAM's maximum royalty was set to 0.25%. The Commission claimed that halving the DDR SDRAM rate for SDRAM would reflect the fact that while DDR SDRAM utilizes four of the relevant Rambus technologies, SDRAM uses only two.
Other settlements
In 2013 and 2014, Rambus settled and agreed on licensing terms with several of the companies involved in long-running disputes. On December 13, 2013, Rambus entered an agreement with Micron to let the latter use some of its patents, in exchange for $280 million worth of royalties over seven years.[45] In June 2013, the company settled with SK Hynix, with Hynix paying $240 million to settle the disputes.[46]
In March 2014, Rambus and Nanya signed a 5-year patent licensing agreement, settling earlier claims.[47]
Rambus said these deals were part of a change in strategy to a less litigious, more collaborative approach, distancing themselves from accusations of patent trolling. Ronald Black, Rambus's CEO, said, "Somehow we got thrown into the patent troll bunch ... This is just not the case."[46]
