Rambus sues Samsung for patent infringement

Rambus has filed a patent infringement suit against Samsung. The company says Samsung's DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3 memory devices violate fourteen patents owned by Rambus.

In a separate suit filed today, Rambus named Samsung as a defendant in claims alleging infringement of ten Rambus patents by Samsung SDRAM and DDR DRAM memory types as well as controllers that work with those memory types.

"While we have regarded Samsung as a valuable licensee of our patents for certain applications, a number of issues now exist that have made the renewal and expansion of the Samsung SDRAM/DDR license difficult," said Harold Hughes, chief executive officer at Rambus. "These issues have caused us to terminate that license prior to its scheduled June 30, 2005 end date. We continue to value our relationship with Samsung as one of the primary manufactures of memory using our XDR DRAM and RDRAM designs. We very much hope that there is an opportunity in the near future to normalize all other aspects of our relationship as well."

Today's action does not affect Samsung's role as a licensee of RDRAM and XDR DRAM memory types.