Rambus wins $307 million in Hynix chip patent case

SAN JOSE, Calif./SEOUL, Apr 25 (Reuters) Rambus Inc. was awarded 7 million by a U.S. jury that found South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc. violated the company's memory chip patents, boosting Rambus shares more than 15 percent.

The jury in the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose on Monday ordered Hynix, the world's second-biggest maker of memory chips, to pay .5 million in damages regarding patents on a type of computer memory known as SDRAM and 6.4 million on one called DDRSD.

Rambus developed technology to make these chips run faster and has similar suits pending against other memory chip makers, such as No. 1 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., also of South Korea, and Micron Technology Inc.

''We continue to hold out an olive branch to resolve these matters short of full-scale trials,'' Rambus general counsel John Danforth told a conference call.

''By doing this, we give defendants and potential defendants a way to avoid significant exposure to antitrust and patent cases,'' Danforth said.

Rambus, which researches and develops computer technology, also wants memory chip companies that do not pay licensing fees to stop making chips.

Hynix lead attorney Dan Furniss said the fight was not over and that his company would seek to prove the patents were unfair.

''We will seek an order finding these patents unenforceable because they were anti-competitive,'' Furniss said.

Shares in Hynix fell as much as 3.24 percent in Seoul on Tuesday morning and were down down 1.8 percent at 33,300 won by 0020 GMT.

Samsung shares fell 0.7 percent to 668,000 won, compared with a 0.6 percent gain in the broader Korean market.

''We have a chance to appeal before the final ruling is made,'' said James Kim, director of investor relations at Hynix. ''We are setting aside provisions against patent litigations and the ruling will have no immediate (financial) impact.'' Kim declined to reveal the size of any additional provision the company might have to make.

Hynix said last week it had set aside 0 million in the first quarter over various patent litigations it was facing and added it would appeal any negative ruling.

The case, which went to trial a month ago after six years of legal wrangling, has been closely watched in the billion-a-year market for computer memory chips known as DRAM, or dynamic random access memory.

The verdict was based on what the jury felt Rambus would have collected if Hynix had paid standard royalties -- typically 2-3 percent -- on certain products sold in the United States over about five years starting in June 2000.

It increases Rambus's prospects in remaining legal issues with Hynix as well as in cases against Samsung and Micron, said John Ward, an intellectual-property attorney with Greenberg Traurig in Palo Alto, California.

''If I were Rambus, I would certainly be very happy with the verdict in hand to be able to negotiate some settlements with Hynix and other defendants as well,'' Ward said. ''It's going to increase their leverage and their negotiating power against the other defendants.'' Monday's award is more than double Rambus's 2005 revenue of 6 million.

Rambus holds around a thousand patents on various types of computer technology, and specializes in those that increase the speed of data transfer between various computer components.

Shares in Rambus, which plummeted as much as 20 percent last Thursday on fears that it had lost the Hynix case, closed up 15.3 percent at .50 on Monday.

Rambus' stock has more than tripled in the past six months on expectations it would prevail in the patent lawsuit.

REUTERS CS BD0924