Sued Samsung, Rambus did

Rambus today (6/15/05) in a filing with the SEC announced that it has added Samsung as a defendant in its antitrust litigation.

Rambus filed an antitrust lawsuit in California Superior Court in San Francisco in April of 2004, alleging Hynix Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies, Micron Technology and Siemens AG engaged in a concerted and unlawful effort to eliminate competition and stifle innovation in the market for computer memory technology and computer memory chips.

In the April 2004 press release, Rambus stated in part:

The 36-page complaint filed today relies in substantial part on evidence obtained through a Federal Trade Commission proceeding and asserts four causes of action:

Conspiracy to restrict output and fix prices in violation of the Cartwright Act;

Conspiracy to monopolize in violation of the Cartwright Act;

Intentional interference with prospective economic advantage; and

Unfair competition in violation of California Business and Professions Code Section 17200.

In February 2005, Rambus announced that it had successfully defended its desired venue in San Francisco, California, against the objections of the defendants.

In March 2005, Rambus dismissed Infineon and Siemens, AG, as defendants in the antitrust litigation. (Cut a deal, Rambus did.)

In April 2005, the court overruled a joint demurrer by the defendants seeking a dismissal of Rambus' complaint.

Rambus adding Samsung to its antitrust litigation capped a flurry of recent Samsung related activity which publicly began when Rambus announced that Samsung was in breach of its licensing agreement and filed a lawsuit against Samsung for patent infringement in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California regarding SDRAM and DDR DRAM memory types as a well as controllers that work with those memory types.

Concurrently, Rambus amended a previously filed lawsuit to include Samsung as a defendant for patent infringement in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California regarding DDR2 memory devices and GDDR2 and GDDR3 graphics memory devices. Other defendants include: Hynix, Nanya Technology, and Inotera Memories.

Samsung, hoping to find a friendly court, filed (6/7/05) a suit against Rambus in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking a declaration of invalidity of the four Rambus patents previously at issue in the Eastern District of Virginia in Rambus' now-settled litigation with Infineon Technologies AG. In a SEC filing, Rambus states :

. . . the Samsung suit also challenges the enforceability of the four Rambus patents on grounds that Rambus allegedly spoliated relevant documents and misused information from JEDEC, a standards setting organization for the solid state industry.

Rambus believes it has the goods on Samsung (and others) in part due to the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) investigation of a conspiracy by certain members of the DRAM industry to fix RDRAM prices and eliminate competition. Hynix as part of a plea agreement with the DOJ has agreed to cooperate in the DOJ's ongoing investigation. Rambus has been provided some documents produced by Hynix and Micron in the DOJ investigation.

Hat tip to several members of the Pinehurst Thread who have provided me with a plethora of Rambus / Samsung related links to SEC filings, press releases, litigation documents and articles . . . that have been stacking up in my email folders crying to be read.