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Rambus launches more antitrust action

Stefanie Olsen CNET News

Published: 06 May 2004 10:00 BST

Chip designer Rambus has filed antitrust lawsuits against Siemens and Micron Technology, furthering its legal assault on rivals.

The company filed an antitrust lawsuit in the Superior Court of California on Wednesday. The suit, which also names Hynix Semiconductor and Infineon Technologies, alleges that the four companies together stifled competition in the computer memory chip market.

"From substantial written evidence already in the public record, we believe that these memory manufacturers colluded illegally, thereby limiting consumer choice and depriving our RDRAM products of the opportunity to compete fairly in the marketplace," Rambus general counsel John Danforth said in a statement.

Representatives for the defendants could not be immediately reached for comment.

The suit adds to a series of Rambus litigation against competitors and fuels an already contentious faction of the chip industry. US and European regulators are investigating semiconductor manufacturers, including Infineon and Micron Technology, over potential price-fixing in the memory market.

Rambus has a history of legal entanglements with its current defendants, including cases against Hynix and Infineon.

In 2002, a federal trials court dismissed Rambus' case against German chipmaker Infineon for patent infringement and granted Infineon millions in attorneys' fees and damages. An appeals court, however, overturned the damage awards in 2003 and ordered that the court allow Rambus to bring its case against Infineon in a new trial. If Rambus wins, Infineon may have to pay its rival millions of dollars in damages.

Rambus is also empowered by a recent ruling from the Federal Trade Commission. In February, the FTC dismissed its two-year antitrust case against the chipmaker after finding that Rambus did not engage in illegal conduct.

The case centred on allegations that Rambus deceived the industry and a standards body by not disclosing its patent plans regarding synchronous dynamic random access memory while SDRAM-related standards talks were under way. Once standards had been adopted, Rambus filed intellectual-property suits against several major makers of SDRAM, the most common memory found on the market.

Rambus' 36-page complaint cites evidence obtained through the Federal Trade Commission and its investigation into price fixing. It charges the four companies with unfair competition and conspiracy to fix prices and monopolise the market in violation of the Cartwright Act, among other grievances.

"While we cannot change the past, we have a duty to our stockholders to respond appropriately to this evidence, which we are doing today."

Last month, Rambus reported an increase in earnings for the first quarter. Earnings for the quarter came to $8.3m (£4.6m), or 7 cents a share, compared with $5.1m, or 5 cents a share, in the same period last year. It also reported a $1.9m increase in litigation expenses during the quarter.