Stefan Mileschin

Rambus has lost a suit against chip makers LSI and STMicroelectronics. The company, which sometimes faces accusations of being a patent troll, was dealt a blow after the US International Trade Commission ruled that the pair did not infringe on any of the company's patents.

Rambus went after the chip makers claiming that they had infringed on patents relating to
chipset communication and controlling of memory and digital transmitters.

However, the ITC stood up to the company and said that some patents were unenforceable. It has now terminated the investigation, which is sure to be a bitter pill to swallow.

The battle began back in December 2010 when Rambus went on a suing spree - filing patent infringement suits left, right and centre. In its firing line were Freescale, Broadcom, MediaTek and Nvidia, which were forced to settle and sign licence agreement deals.

However, the ITC didn't make a judgement on LSI and STMicroelectronics, which continued fighting until yesterday.

Rambus isn't one to shy away from the courts, however as of late judges have put a stop on its success. Back in November it lost a costly $3.95 billion jury trial over its allegations that Micron and Hynix Semiconductor conspired to revent its memory chips from becoming an industry standard.

At the time its shares fell from $14 to $4.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/rambus...croelectronics