Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany) announced that the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia will issue an injunction barring Rambus Inc. from asserting its fraud-tainted US patents against any of Infineon's SDRAM and DDR SDRAM products manufactured according to open-industry standards.
The Court's entry of a permanent injunction affirms the August 2001 decision of Federal District Judge Robert Payne to uphold a Virginia jury verdict that Rambus committed fraud in connection with the SDRAM standardization process of the Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council.
"As the Court noted in August, the fraud committed by Rambus affected an entire segment of the semiconductor industry," said Ulrich Schumacher, president and CEO of Infineon Technologies AG. "This is a very important decision both for Infineon and for the entire DRAM industry, and we are very pleased with the court's action."
In actions taken during and as a result of the litigation, Judge Payne dismissed all of Rambus' patent-infringement claims related to both Infineon's SDRAM and DDR SDRAM products. Judge Payne also ordered Rambus to pay Infineon more than $7.0 million in attorney's fees and expenses incurred by Infineon as a result of the suits heard by the Court. The Court based the payment order on its finding that the patent-infringement claims of Rambus were "baseless, unjustified and frivolous"; the seriousness of the fraud; and Rambus' conduct during the litigation.
