Rambus backs out of Hyundai lawsuit

The International Trade Commission (ITC) has confirmed that memory vendor Rambus is dropping its patent lawsuit against Hyundai.

Rambus had accused the international electronics giant of violating US law by importing SDRam- and DDRam-based technology into the country, which Rambus alleged broke its patents. The ITC has now formally ended the investigation Rambus launched in June.

The decision could lead to other vendors attempting to negotiate patent licence agreements which they signed with Rambus. Last year, Samsung, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi all signed agreements to settle similar disputes with Rambus.

Despite the decision to pull out of its Hyundai suit, Rambus still has suits pending against Sega, Micron and Infineon. The date for the latter hearing has been put back to May 2001.

Separately, Samsung has announced that it expects to capture up to 53 per cent of the world's Rambus market during 2001. The company sold 30 million Rambus modules last year and believes sales will grow by 117 per cent in 2001.

According to the electronics vendor, demand for Intel's newly released Pentium 4 chip, which uses Rambus memory exclusively, has been the major factor in pushing up sales.

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