Rambus Inc still must face chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG's claims that the high-speed chip designer misused information from an industry standards group in the 1990s to obtain patents, a judge said.
US District Judge Robert Payne in Richmond, Virginia, declined to dismiss the racketeering and fraud allegations against the Los Altos, California-based Rambus.
Infineon filed the counterclaims after Rambus sued last year, alleging Europe's biggest chipmaker infringed four US patents for DRAM designs.
Payne last week threw out Rambus' patent-infringement claims against Infineon. Closing arguments on the remaining Infineon counterclaims against Rambus are scheduled to begin today.
"Infineon is seeking to get Rambus' patents declared unenforceable as a result of Rambus' misconduct at [the Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council]," which could result in firms now paying royalties to stop paying, chip-industry analyst Mark Edelstone of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter said.
Infineon alleges in its complaint that Rambus "intentionally misled" members of the standards committee, which "promulgated standards that Rambus now claims are covered by its patents."
"We participated in JEDEC but did nothing that was against the rules or anything that we felt was improper," Rambus Chief Financial Officer Gary Harmon said.
Had Rambus proven Infineon infringed its patents, analysts said it might have been in a position to collect as much as US$1 billion in license fees and royalties from other companies.
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