Rambus Inc. v. NVIDIA Corporation was a patent infringement case between Rambus and Nvidia. The case was heard in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Rambus Inc, founded in 1990, is an American technology company that designs, develops and licenses chip interface technologies and architectures that are used in digital electronics products. The company is well known for inventing RDRAM® and for its intellectual property-based litigation following the introduction of DDR-SDRAM memory. NVIDIA, founded in 1993, is an American technology company that manufactures, distributes and designs graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming and professional markets, as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market.
In 2008, Rambus Inc, initially filed a complaint accusing NVIDIA Corporation of infringing seventeen Rambus patents. Rambus licenses patents covering technologies that it invents and develops to companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Nintendo and Creative Labs. Since its founding in 1990, Rambus has been awarded, by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, over 1,000 patents on many of the components that make up memory controllers and modern computer processor chips.
In this case, starting in July 2008, Rambus argued that NVIDIA's units infringed its patents on SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR and GDDR3 technologies, to name a few. Rambus sought a preliminary injunction and compensation for damages under in addition to an adjudication that NVIDIA has infringed and continues to infringe the Rambus patents. Early on, Rambus dropped two of the seventeen patent infringement claims due to covenant dealings. NVIDIA moved for a stay on the remaining fifteen patents pursuant to . Judge Susan Illston ordered for a stay on nine patents, pending a ruling from the International Trade Commission (ITC) in which Rambus was filing similar patent infringement suits against NVIDIA as well as other related chip and memory manufacturing companies. The request to stay on the remaining six patents was denied. Later on it was settled that the nine patents presented in another ITC case were unenforceable in the case of Micron v. Rambus. In July, 2010, ITC ruled that NVIDIA violated three patents belonging to Rambus. NVIDIA soon signed a license with Rambus while appealing the ITC ruling.
Background
Rambus Inc. develops new chip technologies, obtains patents for these technologies and subsequently sells licenses on these patents to companies in the memory chip and video card business, such as Intel and Micron Inc. In the past year, 96% of its revenue came from licenses. Rambus licenses its technologies to customers who take these technologies and further develop them and integrate them into systems that are sold to consumers. Examples of such systems are the PS3, laptops, and netbooks. The technologies include memory controllers, memory components, memory modules, and memory systems. NVIDIA sells GPUs and has been doing so since 1990. Rambus filed a complaint that Nvidia's use of chip technology infringed on several patents that Rambus holds.
The complaint, filed on July 10, 2008, charged NVIDIA Corporation with infringing seventeen Rambus patents, though two of these claims were dropped. The fifteen patents considered in this case fall into one of two groups: those filed by Michael Farmwald and Mark Horowitz, the founders of Rambus (described in the case as the six 'FH' patents), and nine patents claiming technology invented by Richard Barth and/or Frederick Ware, (the "Barth/Ware" patents). The complaint alleges, for each of the patents-insuit, that NVIDIA has directly infringed the patents "and/or has contributed and continues to contribute to the literal infringement and/or infringement under the doctrine of equivalents . . . and/or has actively induced and continues to actively induce others to infringe [the patents-in-suit]." Rambus sought monetary and injunctive relief, including treble damages and attorneys' fees due to defendant's willful infringement and the "exceptional nature of this case."
The day after Rambus filed the patent lawsuit, NVIDIA filed an antitrust lawsuit against Rambus in the middle District of North Carolina. In December, 2008, the North Carolina court transferred NVIDIA's antitrust action to United States District Court for the Northern District of California on the grounds that NVIDIA's antitrust claims properly belonged as counterclaims to Rambus's patent infringement claims in this case. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered consolidation of the two cases.