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.
