The lawsuit was filed on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Rambus is seeking injunctive relief barring the infringement, contributory infringement, and inducement to infringe the Rambus patents, as well as monetary damages.
The company claims that Nvidia’s products with memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM infringe 17 Rambus patents. Rambus has also filed a a list on the infringing products, which includes chipsets, graphics processors, media communication processors and multimedia applications processors and other products
“For more than six years, we have diligently attempted to negotiate a licensing agreement with Nvidia, but our good faith efforts have been to no avail,” said Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus. “Graphics and multimedia products require leading-edge memory performance, and as NVIDIA advances its product portfolio, it infringes more and more of our patents. We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions. Nevertheless, we hope to continue discussions with Nvidia to reach a negotiated settlement.”
If you recall, Rambus is the same company who ended up suing everyone and then almost vanished from the market back in 2000. Will do better this time or is this only a desperate attempt to gain some media attention?