In the latest wrinkle in the Rambus Inc. legal fubar, a U.S. district court denied a request by German memory maker Infineon Technologies AG to stay the trial pending rulings in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust case against Rambus.

Los Altos, Calif.-based IP company Rambus originally brought the patent infringement suit against Infineon in U.S.; District Court for the Eastern District Court of Virginia; the FTC has its own antitrust case brewing against Rambus, spawned by briefs and complaints filed by Infineon and others such as Hynix, AMD and the JEDEC standards body. A ruling on that case is expected next month.

In the Rambus/Infineon patent dispute, the federal court did cull the number of Rambus' patent claims in the case from 50 down to four, however, in setting a trial date. The court ruled that the other claims were not the subject of Rambus' successful appeal decided by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in January of last year.

This is the latest step in a legal entanglement that stretches back several years, with Rambus at the center. These various lawsuits and complaints arose out of allegations from Infineon and its rivals accusing Rambus of fraud for failing to disclose pending SDRAM patents to JEDEC in the 1990s while the standards body was drafting an SDRAM standard.

Those allegations arose after Rambus took several companies to task in court, including Infineon, over the use of the IP in question covered by its patents.

Rambus announced last July that it had been cleared of the fraud allegations, with a court issuing a stipulated order dismissing without prejudice an amended complaint in the case that Infineon had brought against it. That ruling stemmed from January, when a federal appeals court threw out a jury verdict convicting Rambus of fraud in a 2001 federal district trial.

For its last legal bid in the fraud fight, Infineon went so far as to hire high-profile lawyer Kenneth Star of President Clinton impeachment fame to handle its appeal to the Supreme Court. Late last autumn, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

While the FTC's case and its own patent case continue, Rambus has prevailed on other legal fronts as well. A northern California federal court tossed out the shareholder's suit against IP company last spring.

The Supreme Court's refusal to accept Infineon's petition following the legal dismissal of the fraud allegations, the legal battle will likely come down to the pending trial in Rambus' patent infringement case against Infineon. Observers expect that Rambus will prevail in the FTC antitrust case, given the fact that the fraud case against Rambus was tossed.

By: DocMemory
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