International Trade Commission to Investigate Alleged Rambus’ Patent Infringements by Nvidia

Rambus, a leading developer of high-speed interface and memory architectures, on Friday said that, at its request, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has instituted an investigation regarding infringement of Rambus’ patents by Nvidia Corp. and other companies whose products incorporate the accused products by Nvidia.

The complaint by Rambus seeks an exclusion order barring the importation, sale for importation, or sale after importation of products that infringe nine Rambus patents from the Ware and Barth families of patents. The accused products include Nvidia products that incorporate DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, GDDR, GDDR2, and GDDR3 memory controllers, including GeForce graphics processors and nForce chipsets.

Since Rambus believes that it invented all the modern DRAM technologies, it seeks royalty payments not only from memory makers, but also from those, who develop memory controllers and sells them as part of their products. Since the vast majority of computing and communication devices utilize a type of DRAM memory, Rambus may theoretically sue virtually all companies involved into electronics businesses who do not have a cross-licensing agreement with Rambus.

The complaint names Nvidia as a proposed respondent, as well as companies whose products incorporate accused Nvidia products and are imported into the United States.

Nvidia believes that it has not violated any patents that Rambus owns.