By Susan Decker and Phil Milford
Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Rambus Inc., a designer of high-speed memory chips, can’t use 12 of its patents to demand royalties from Micron Technology Inc., a federal judge in Delaware ruled. Rambus dropped as much as 28 percent.
U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson in Wilmington said today the patents are unenforceable because Rambus destroyed documents in the infringement lawsuit. She called Rambus’s litigation conduct “obstructive at best, misleading at worst.”
“The very integrity of the litigation process has been impugned,” Robinson said in an opinion issued today.
Micron sued Rambus in 2000, alleging it tried to control the market for so-called dynamic random access memory chips. This case is one a series of challenges in which Rambus demands royalties on its patents and chipmakers claim the company wrongly obtained the patents on an industry standard.
Micron, Hynix Semiconductor Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Nanya Technology Corp., are challenging some of Rambus’s patents in a trial beginning in federal court in San Jose.
Rambus fell $4.91, or 27 percent, to $13.59 at 12:35 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and fell as low as $13.28. The shares, which often rise and fall based on rulings in Rambus litigation, are down 23 percent from a year ago.
The case is Micron Technology Inc. v. Rambus Inc., 00CV792- SLR, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).
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