South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc said yesterday it would appeal against a US federal court decision finding it guilty of violating 10 patents of US high-tech firm Rambus Inc.
The US federal court in San Jose, California, on Monday ordered Hynix to pay US$306.5 million in damages to Rambus.
Hynix said it would seek to nullify the Rambus patents in the next stage of litigation, saying they were issued in an anti-competitive process.
Hynix said its appeal would focus on "whether or not Rambus violated anti-trust laws in acquiring and enforcing these patents."
"In the next phase, scheduled for this summer, Hynix will seek to have all of the Rambus patents in dispute held [to be] unenforceable," Hynix said.
Rambus specializes in technology that speeds the transmission of data between computer chips.
The damages cover Hynix memory chip sales between June of 2000 and the end of last year, according to Rambus.
The first jury verdict siding with Rambus' infringement claims gives the Los Altos, California-based company leverage to press similar cases against Samsung Electronics Co and other makers of computer chips known as dynamic random access memory. It also improves Rambus' chances of winning royalties it seeks from manufacturers in the US$26 billion DRAM industry.
"This verdict just goes to show that patent risks are going to linger in the DRAM industry and they're not going away anytime soon," said Lee Keon-hak, who counts Hynix and Samsung shares amid the US$746 million he helps manage at CJ Asset Management Co in Seoul.
"This verdict was particularly significant because it was the first and sets a precedent," Lee said.
Rambus currently has similar patent-infringement cases pending against Samsung, as well as US-based Micron Technology Inc and Taiwan-based Nanya Technology Corp (
Toshiba Corp won a patent infringement case against Hynix late last month as a result of which Hynix was ordered by a Tokyo court to halt sales of NAND flash memory chips in Japan.
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