Rambus plans U.S. suit against Hyundai, asks for change of venue

Rambus plans U.S. suit against Hyundai, asks for change of venue
By Semiconductor Business News
October 9, 2000 (8:35 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20001009S0004

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--In its latest round of legal maneuvers, Rambus Inc. has filed a motion to change the venue of a U.S. patent suit filed by Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd. from San Jose to a federal court in Virginia. Rambus here also said it plans to file its own U.S. patent suit against Hyundai in response to the South Korean company's case, which attempts to invalidate the company's claims on technology rights to high-speed synchronous DRAM interfaces (see Aug. 30 story).

Mountain View-based Rambus has been attempting to force a number of DRAM makers to license its technologies for high-speed SDRAMs, double data rate (DDR) memories, and controller interfaces to those chips. Several negotiations have broke down and resulted in lawsuits in the past three months.

Rambus has filed suits against Hyundai in Europe, and the company said it will add a patent-infringeme nt case in the U.S. against the Korean memory maker. Rambus reported on Friday evening that it has asked to move Hyundai's suit to the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, where it has a pending lawsuit against Infineon Technologies AG (see Aug. 11 story).

According to Rambus, a change of venue would allow one court to handle the proceedings in the patent dispute and speed up the results. Rambus also said it has filed a motion to dismiss Hyundai's suit.