Toshiba Sign Patent Licensing Deal with Rambus

Recently Rambus and Toshiba has signed a new patent license agreement granting Toshiba a license to Rambus patents for SDRAM and DDRRAM memory controllers. Toshiba already holds licenses for the use of Rambus’ XDR memory solution, DDR2 interface cells and FlexIO processor bus interface. Additionally, Toshiba has licensed various Rambus serial link interface designs, including those for Advanced Backplane, Fibre Channel and PCI Express applications. Earlier, in April 2006 a Jury of the U.S. District Court for the Northern California awarded $ 307 million as damages to Rambus in patent infringement lawsuit against rival Hynix Semiconductor for infringing Rambus’ U.S. Patents. However, Hynix later appealed the district court ruling. Rambus patent litigation fire starts back in January 2000 when it sued Hitachi for infringing its patents for standard memory chips but later agreed to grant Hitachi a license to Rambus patents under a licensing agreement and thereby terminating all pending litigations. Relevant Cases --- Hynix Semiconductor et al. vs. Rambus, Inc. (Judge Ronald M. Whyte, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, filed on August 29, 2000)