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Rambus, a leading developer of memory and interconnection technologies, on Monday withdrew certain accusations against Nvidia Corp. Last week Nvidia said that the U.S. patent and trademark office (USPTO) had has initially rejected all 41 claims challenged by Nvidia in seven patents which Rambus has asserted in litigation against the graphics and core-logic chip designer.
Rambus has asked an administrative law judge at the International Trade Commission (ITC) to terminate the investigation of Nvidia relating to four patents stemming from a complaint filed in November 2008. Rambus has conceded that NVIDIA products do not infringe on its four patents before the ITC, and has also asked for termination of several claims from a fifth patent in the ITC action.
“We are pleased Rambus has recognized the weakness of these patents and claims. “These withdrawals represent essentially half of the patents and one third of the claims asserted against us, and we look forward to addressing the remainder of the case,” stated David Shannon, Nvidia executive vice president and general counsel.
The current ITC litigation originally included nine patents involving memory controllers related to graphics processors. On June 2, 2009, Nvidia publicly announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had rejected 41 claims, in seven patents, which Rambus had asserted in the ITC action against Nvidia.
The complaint by Rambus seeks an exclusion order barring the importation, sale for importation, or sale after importation of products that infringe nine Rambus patents from the Ware and Barth families of patents. The accused products include Nvidia products that incorporate DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, GDDR, GDDR2, and GDDR3 memory controllers, including GeForce graphics processors and nForce chipsets.
Since Rambus believes that it invented all the modern DRAM technologies, it seeks royalty payments not only from memory makers, but also from those, who develop memory controllers and sells them as part of their products.
