Rambus faces antitrust claim from Brussels
Saturday, 25 August 2007
Richard Waters in San Francisco and Sarah Laitner in Brussels
The European Commi-ssion has lodged a formal antitrust complaint against Rambus adding to pressure on the US company over the way it charges for technology that is widely used in the memory chip industry.
The action followed a ruling against the company by the Federal Trade Commission in the US last year over a similar complaint. Rambus is appealing against that decision.
According to the Commission's statement of objections, Rambus "engaged in intentional deceptive conduct" in its dealings in the early 1990s with a technology standards-setting body, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council.
The US company hid its plans to patent part of the technology that was eventually put into an industry standard, says the claim.
This "patent ambush" had put it in a position to charge "unreasonable royalties" later on as other companies adopted the standard, the Commission added.
While seeking to restrict Rambus's ability to profit from its widely used memory chip technology, however, the European regulators have not sought to overturn its rights completely.
"It appears that the European Commission is not taking the most aggressive position it could," said Daniel Prywes, an attorney at Bryan Cave, which represents the JEDEC.
By proposing that Rambus should be forced to charge "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalties, it has stopped short of trying to push for the disputed technology to be licensed royalty-free to other chipmakers, he added. In the US, the FTC has already set its own rates for Rambus products.
"We are studying the statement of objections and plan to respond in due course," Rambus said. It added that the events covered in the complaint were "largely the same issues examined by a number of US courts".
The European Commi-ssion has lodged a formal antitrust complaint against Rambus adding to pressure on the US company over the way it charges for technology that is widely used in the memory chip industry.
The action followed a ruling against the company by the Federal Trade Commission in the US last year over a similar complaint. Rambus is appealing against that decision.
According to the Commission's statement of objections, Rambus "engaged in intentional deceptive conduct" in its dealings in the early 1990s with a technology standards-setting body, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council.
The US company hid its plans to patent part of the technology that was eventually put into an industry standard, says the claim.
This "patent ambush" had put it in a position to charge "unreasonable royalties" later on as other companies adopted the standard, the Commission added.
While seeking to restrict Rambus's ability to profit from its widely used memory chip technology, however, the European regulators have not sought to overturn its rights completely.
"It appears that the European Commission is not taking the most aggressive position it could," said Daniel Prywes, an attorney at Bryan Cave, which represents the JEDEC.
By proposing that Rambus should be forced to charge "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalties, it has stopped short of trying to push for the disputed technology to be licensed royalty-free to other chipmakers, he added. In the US, the FTC has already set its own rates for Rambus products.
"We are studying the statement of objections and plan to respond in due course," Rambus said. It added that the events covered in the complaint were "largely the same issues examined by a number of US courts".