Rambus accused of ITC 'judge shopping' in DRAM patent complaint
![]() |
Rambus accused of ITC 'judge shopping' in DRAM patent complaint
By Jack Robertson, EBN
November 16, 2000 (6:19 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20001115S0062
WASHINGTON -- Rambus Inc. was reprimanded for "blatant judge shopping" in an official ruling at the U.S. International Trade Commission and restrictions imposed on the DRAM designer if it ever filed another synchronous DRAM patent complaint at the trade body. ITC Administrative Law Judge Sidney Harris ruled that when Rambus abruptly withdrew its patent violation case against Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. assigned to him, the company was engaged in "judge shopping" because the firm didn't want him to handle the case. Legal sources said Harris has a reputation for being a tough magistrate and has been known frequently to rule against patents of firms filing complaints. Rambus filed to withdraw its ITC patent suit against Hyundai soon after Harris was assigned the case. In his ruling Harris said when Rambus filed its petition the firm had expected to have its case heard before Administrative Law Judge Paul Luckern, who was next in the rotatio n of assignments to be assigned a new ITC complaint. However, at the last minute The ITC assigned Luckern to hear another case, so the Rambus petition went before Harris. "The facts and circumstances in this investigation...appear to show a blatant instance of judge shopping," Harris ruled. In documents filed in the case, Rambus denied it was guilty of judge shopping. The firm said it withdrew the complaint based on confidential strategic factors. Judge Harris rejected the Rambus response as vague allegations of litigation strategy, which is not described in detail and not even mentioned in the original motion to withdraw the case. It constitutes a failure to rebut the strong inference of judge shopping, he ruled. The claim of "privileged" litigation strategy is highly improbable, the judge added, saying that "Rambus has engaged in impermissible judge shopping." Harris ruled that if Rambus in the future ever filed a new synchronous patent infringement case against Hyundai, or even any other fi rm, such a petition must be assigned to his court if he is able to hear it.
Related News
- ITC agrees to investigate Rambus' patent claims against Hitachi, Sega
- ITC to investigate Tessera's patent complaint against Sharp, TI
- TI asks judge to block ITC review of Tessera's patent violation claim
- Administrative Law Judge in ITC Investigation Issues Initial Determination Granting LG's Motion to Terminate Investigation as to LG
- Rambus Files ITC Complaint against Broadcom, Freescale, LSI, MediaTek, NVIDIA and STMicroelectronics
Breaking News
- Breker RISC-V SystemVIP Deployed across 15 Commercial RISC-V Projects for Advanced Core and SoC Verification
- Veriest Solutions Strengthens North American Presence at DVCon US 2025
- Intel in advanced talks to sell Altera to Silverlake
- Logic Fruit Technologies to Showcase Innovations at Embedded World Europe 2025
- S2C Teams Up with Arm, Xylon, and ZC Technology to Drive Software-Defined Vehicle Evolution
Most Popular
- Intel in advanced talks to sell Altera to Silverlake
- Arteris Revolutionizes Semiconductor Design with FlexGen - Smart Network-on-Chip IP Delivering Unprecedented Productivity Improvements and Quality of Results
- RaiderChip NPU for LLM at the Edge supports DeepSeek-R1 reasoning models
- YorChip announces Low latency 100G ULTRA Ethernet ready MAC/PCS IP for Edge AI
- AccelerComm® announces 5G NR NTN Physical Layer Solution that delivers over 6Gbps, 128 beams and 4,096 user connections per chipset
![]() |
E-mail This Article | ![]() |
![]() |
Printer-Friendly Page |