“We’re letting people know that delaying isn’t the best strategy,” said Sharon Holt, senior vice president of marketing and sales. Although Rambus has been in talks with Taiwan’s major memory makers for some time, she believes “the verdict gives them some incentive to negotiate a little more seriously.”

Last week, a federal jury awarded Rambus more than $306.9 million in a patent infringement dispute with South Korean chipmaker Hynix. The jury agreed that Hynix infringed a number of patents covering fundamental aspects of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. The damage award covers only Hynix sales of SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, and DDR2 memory products to the U.S. between June 2000 and the end of 2005.

So far, Taiwan’s major DRAM makers, which account for about 20 percent of global DRAM output, haven’t shown any obvious signs of being spurred into action by the verdict. “Our position has always been that we respect IP rights, but we would like to be treated fairly,” said Pai Pei-lin, a vice president at Nanya Technology Corp.

Nanya is defending itself in a similar patent case with Rambus that also includes Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology as codefendants. Pai said Nanya wasn’t close to any deal with Rambus, which in the past has asked for a 3.5 percent royalty on memory chips. In 2001, when Rambus was battling German chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG in court, that amounted to about $2 per 128-MByte DDR DRAM memory module.

Rambus has not sued Powerchip Semiconductor Co. and Promos Technologies, the island’s other main DRAM makers. Talks continue and there is no sign that deals are imminent.

Although the court verdict is a significant victory for Rambus, it is unclear how it will influence sales in one of Hynix’s top markets and the world’s second largest PC market, China. Rambus doesn’t have patent protection there. However, Holt said the firm generally signs global licensing agreements that allow them to audit shipments if it becomes necessary. Despite the verdict, Hynix has yet to sign a licensing agreement with Rambus.

Another potential problem for DRAM makers may be the upcoming DDR3 DRAM standard. Although the specification isn’t final yet, Holt suspects that Rambus will have patented technology related to the next generation high-speed DRAM.

Although DRAM patents and litigation have topped the agenda recently, Holt said Rambus is pushing to balance its business by focusing attention on the high-speed logic interfaces it develops. In Taiwan, that means gaining customers in standard interfaces, such as PCI Express, or even in storage and networking interfaces. But the company still has to be careful about over-committing because of its relatively small size.

To date, many of Rambus’ Asian engagements for logic interfaces have been with Japan’s IDMs, rather than with the fabless community. That will likely continue as Rambus looks to work with other Asian companies that have larger resources and high-volume products. It also fits into the company’s strategy of winning more system-wide license agreements, such as the inaugural one it signed with Fujitsu last month covering the manufacture and sale of systems and semiconductors worldwide. Fujitsu’s payment amounts will be based in part on the volume of DRAM that Fujitsu purchases from Rambus-licensed or unlicensed memory suppliers.

By: DocMemory
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