Rambus originally accused Infineon, Europe’s biggest chip maker, of infringing its memory chip patents and sought an order for payment of royalties. It cited 57 separate infringements, but all of them were last week thrown out by the judge. Infineon counter-claimed, accusing Rambus of using fraudulent means to obtain the patents. It sought $105 million in punitive damages. The judge allowed the jury to consider Infineon’s counter-claim.
The jury found that Rambus committed fraud by taking part in a chip industry project to develop open-standard fast memory chips while hiding from the project’s committee the fact that it had pending patent applications on conflicting technology.
The jury in the Richmond, Virginia court found Rambus guilty of fraud and ordered it to pay the sum of $3.5 million, over $100 million less than that claimed by Infineon.
Rambus is heavily dependent upon royalties from its patents – they account for more than three-quarters of its current revenues. It is separately suing Micron and Hyundai’s Hynix with similar allegations of patent infringements. It also has another pending lawsuit against Infineon in Germany.