Meanwhile, a separate investigation by the US Department of Justice is targeting memory chip makers Micron Technology of the US, Winbond Electronics and Naya Technologies of Taiwan, Elpida Memory of Japan (a joint venture between NEC and Hitachi), Hynix Semiconductor of South Korea and Infineon Technologies of Germany. Rambus only designs memory chips – it does not make them, and is not included in this investigation.
The Justice Department is investigating whether these, the biggest makers of dynamic random access memory chips, or DRAM chips, have been manipulating prices. Micron, Winbond and Nanya have confirmed that they received grand jury subpoenas. The grand jury must determine whether or not there is enough evidence to justify a trial.
The facts of the Rambus case concern a standards organisation called the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association which develops and issues widely adopted technical standards for a common form of computer memory known as synchronous dynamic random access memory, or "SDRAM."
According to the FTC's complaint, Rambus participated in JEDEC's SDRAM-related work for more than four years without ever making it known to JEDEC or its members that Rambus was actively working to develop, and did in fact possess, a patent and several pending patent applications that involved specific technologies proposed for, and ultimately adopted in, the relevant standards.
By allegedly concealing this information, in violation of JEDEC's operating rules and procedures, and through other alleged bad-faith, deceptive conduct, the complaint charges that Rambus purposefully sought to, and did, convey to JEDEC the materially false and misleading impression that it had no relevant intellectual property rights.
According to the FTC's complaint, Rambus's challenged conduct has caused or threatened to cause substantial harm to competition and consumers because it has placed Rambus in a position to assert patent rights over the relevant JEDEC standards, and to obtain substantial royalties from memory manufacturers producing products in compliance with those standards.
Rambus has been earning royalties from its patent licences in the range of $50 to $100 million per year. Some chip makers have, however, disputed Rambus's patent rights in litigation.
Should Rambus prevail in its private patent litigation, the FTC complaint asserts that Rambus could, over the life of its patents, "extract royalty payments well in excess of a billion dollars" from the memory industry.