A U.S. jury on Monday said Hynix Semiconductor should pay $306.9 million to U.S. firm Rambus for infringing its patents, but the South Korean chip maker remained confident about the final result of the years-long legal battle which could extend for a few more years.

The jury at the U.S. District Court of Northern California on Monday said Hynix, the world's second largest memory chip maker, should pay compensation money to Rambus for damages regarding its 10 patents on the core technology of DRAM, a memory chip widely used in PCs and other electronics. The court's ruling is scheduled for this summer following the final hearing on the case.

Hynix said it still has a good chance of winning the case even though Monday's result was somewhat disappointing.

``The jury's verdict is just one phase of a long legal process,'' said Hynix spokesperson Park Hyun. ``In the next phase, the court will focus on Rambus' anti-competitive practices. Even if the result of that stage is not satisfying for us, we can still appeal to the higher court and no one knows how long it will take for the final result to come.''

Rambus is a California-based technology firm that specializes in designing high-speed memory chips and licensing the patents to chip manufacturers. It has alleged that global makers such as Samsung Electronics, Hynix, and Micron have breached its patents on the SDRAM and DDR SDRAM, two types of DRAM most widely used in modern computers, since 2000.

Hynix and other memory makers have argued that Rambus' patents are invalid, because the firm did not disclose that it held such patents until the technology was selected as an industrial standard in a global organization of memory makers.

``Rambus deliberately hid the patents and waited, and we believe such behavior is illegal,'' said Park.

Rambus' cases against Samsung and Micron are still pending.