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''Rambus Inc. v. NVIDIA Corporation'' was a patent infringement case heard in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In 2008, Rambus Inc. initially filed a complaint accusing NVIDIA Corporation of infringing seventeen Rambus patents. Rambus Inc. licenses patents it owns to companies, these patents are either acquired and purchased from third parties, or are acquired through the filing of new technologies developed at Rambus. Since its founding in 1990, Rambus has acquired patents on many of the components that make up memory controllers and modern computer processor chips. NVIDIA manufactures and distributes Graphics Processing Units (GPU). GPUs debuted in 1999 and have since greatly enhanced computer graphics and parallel processing capabilities. 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.〔"Description of Rambus, Inc (reuters)"http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=RMBS.O〕 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. An example 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 (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. On November 6, 2008, Rambus filed a complaint against NVIDIA in the United States International Trade Commission alleging infringement of the nine Barth/Ware patents. On December 4, 2008, NVIDIA moved to stay litigation on all of Rambus' infringement claims, on the ground that the ITC proceeding automatically stayed litigation on the Barth/Ware patents pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1659, and that, inter alia, the FH patents involved many of the same products involved in the ITC proceedings. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rambus Inc. v. Nvidia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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