Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS) today announced it will collaborate with Microsoft researchers in the exploration of future memory requirements for quantum computing. The expertise of Rambus in high-bandwidth, power-efficient memory architectures, combined with Microsoft researchers' knowledge of advanced system and data center design will be applied to drive new technology platforms.

"Existing computer architectures are reaching limits due to the ever increasing demands of real-time data consumption, which is driving the need to explore new high-performance, energy-efficient computer systems," said Gary Bronner, vice president of Rambus Labs. "By working with Microsoft on this project, we can leverage our vast expertise in memory systems to identify new architectural models."

Rambus Inc. today announced that it has signed a comprehensive patent license agreement with Qualcomm Global Trading Pte. Ltd., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated. The agreement provides Qualcomm Incorporated and its subsidiaries with access to innovative patented memory, interface, and security technologies from Rambus. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

"This agreement highlights our ongoing commitment to providing access to valuable memory and security technologies to industry leaders," said Dr. Ron Black, president and chief executive officer at Rambus. "Engaging with Qualcomm with this agreement gives us an opportunity to collaborate with the broader industry to bring compelling solutions to the segment."

Rambus Inc., the innovative technology solutions company, and Nanya Technology Corporation, the industry leading pure-play consumer memory company, today announced they have signed a broad five-year patent license agreement. This agreement allows for the use of certain high-performance, low-power patented innovations developed by Rambus in Nanya DRAM products and enables future technology collaboration.

Under this agreement, Rambus and Nanya have settled all outstanding claims, providing Nanya with access to certain memory-related Rambus innovations through the second quarter of 2018. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

Samsung Electronics and Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ:RMBS), the innovative technology solutions company that brings invention to market, today announced the companies have signed a comprehensive 10-year license agreement. The agreement extends the existing relationship between the companies, providing Samsung with access to Rambus' innovative technologies for inclusion in Samsung ICs. The agreement requires quarterly royalty payments to Rambus of $15 million per quarter for the first five years, with an initial payment of $22 million for the fourth quarter of 2013. Payments in the second five-year period are variable and subject to market-related factors. The agreement further provides Samsung access to Rambus' security technologies in system devices such as smart phones, tablets, and set-top boxes. The agreement is set to terminate in 2023. Other terms and details are confidential.

"This new 10-year agreement symbolizes our ability to add value to Samsung through our core memory and security technologies," said Dr. Ron Black, president and chief executive officer at Rambus. "Extending this relationship for a longer term gives us the ability to work with the broader industry on a variety of exciting technology initiatives."

Rambus Inc. the innovative technology solutions company that brings invention to market, today announced it has opened a research center in Paris, France. The European extension of Rambus Labs will address complex security requirements and extend research for IP core integration across a variety of Rambus innovative initiatives.

"Paris makes an ideal location for a Rambus research facility thanks to the technology and security experts in the region," said Dr. Martin Scott, CTO of Rambus. "As security considerations become a bigger part of all integrated circuits, we are dedicating resources in this research center to utilize our core expertise in both security and embedded hardware to develop compelling, innovative solutions to bring to market."

Rambus Inc., the innovative technology solutions company that brings invention to market, today announced it has signed an agreement with Freescale Semiconductor that expands the relationship between the companies. The agreement extends Freescale's access to Rambus' innovations for memory controllers and serial links. Additionally, the expanded agreement provides Freescale with the ability to collaborate on Rambus' resistive memory technology for embedded applications (eRRAM).

"We are pleased to expand our agreement with Freescale Semiconductor, a leader in embedded processing solutions," said Kevin Donnelly, senior vice president and general manager of the Memory and Interface Division at Rambus. "This agreement and our collaboration with Freescale exemplify our ability to provide additional value to Freescale with our eRRAM technology, and we look forward to our broadening relationship with the Freescale team."

Rambus Inc., the innovative technology solutions company, and SK Hynix, the world's top tier memory semiconductor supplier, today announced they have signed a five-year patent license agreement for the use of Rambus memory-related patented innovations in SK Hynix semiconductor products and have also settled all outstanding claims. The agreement includes a license to certain DRAM products for payments of $12 million per quarter for the next five years. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

"This is a milestone agreement for both companies that puts years of legal disputes behind us and gives us the opportunity for collaboration," said Dr. Ron Black, president and chief executive officer at Rambus. "With this agreement, we can focus more on engaging with the industry as we work on future challenges where we can bring invention and value to the market with superior solutions and products."

Rambus Inc., the innovative technology solutions company that brings invention to market, today announced its first LPDDR3 offering targeted at the mobile industry. In the Rambus R+ solution set, the R+ LPDDR3 memory architecture is fully compatible with industry standards while providing improved power and performance. This allows customers to differentiate their products in a cost-effective manner with improved time-to-market. Further helping improve design and development cycles, the R+ LPDDR3 is also available with Rambus' collaborative design and integration services.

The R+ LPDDR3 architecture includes both a controller and a DRAM interface and can reduce active memory system power by up to 25% and supports data rates of up to 3200 megabits per second (Mbps), which is double the performance of existing LPDDR3 technologies. These improvements to power efficiency and performance enable longer battery life and enhanced mobile device functionality for streaming HD video, gaming and data-intensive apps.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited. This six-year agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations implemented in a broad range of integrated circuit (IC) products offered by Fujitsu Semiconductor. Financial terms of the agreement are confidential.

"As a global leader in the semiconductor market, Fujitsu Semiconductor is an important customer and this agreement validates the continued strength of our portfolio," said Dr. Ronald Black, chief executive officer of Rambus. "We look forward to the opportunity to expand our customer relationships beyond patent license agreements to showcase our technical contributions and system know-how with our customers."

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced that the judge for the Northern District of California (NDCA) has issued his decision in the matter with SK Hynix. The Honorable Ronald M. Whyte has found that the Rambus patents in this case are valid and infringed by SK Hynix and Rambus is entitled to receive royalty payments for past infringement based on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) rates.

"This is a positive result as it is consistent with what we've been seeking all along - reasonable compensation for the use of our patented inventions," said Thomas Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus. "We appreciate the Court's extensive efforts in working through years of complex arguments. While this decision does not provide SK Hynix with a going-forward license, we are hopeful it will lead to putting this matter behind us completely and allow us to reach reasonable agreements."

Rambus Inc. (RMBS), one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced that the International Trade Commission (ITC) has issued its notice of final determination in the action brought by Rambus against LSI Logic, ST Microelectronics and other Respondents. In its notice, the ITC affirmed the initial determination of Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Theodore R. Essex that there was no violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 with respect to the asserted patents. The Commission also reversed the ALJ's determinations that Rambus demonstrated the existence of a domestic industry, that certain asserted Dally claims were invalid, and that those claims were infringed. The action is Investigation Number 337-TA-753.

Rambus has not yet received the full opinion by the Commission. A copy of today's summary is available here.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with MediaTek Inc. This agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of integrated circuit (IC) products offered by MediaTek Inc. In addition, the two companies have settled all outstanding claims, including resolution of past use of Rambus' patented innovations. The term of this patent license agreement is five years. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

"Consumer demand for increasing flexibility in electronic products is at the forefront of disruptive change. We are pleased to sign this agreement with MediaTek, one of the global leaders in SoC systems solutions, to enable greater mobility and accessibility for consumer devices," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "We are committed to the development of innovative new technologies that help our licensees bring superior products to market."

Rambus Inc. (Nasdaq:RMBS), one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced it received notice that the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for its U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) action against LSI Logic, MediaTek, ST Microelectronics and other Respondents has issued an Initial Determination. According to the notice, ALJ Theodore R. Essex found there to be no violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 for the patents in question. The action is Investigation Number 337-TA-753.

Rambus may request a full Commission review of the ALJ's Initial Determination. If the Commission grants a petition for review, it may affirm, modify, reverse, set aside, or remand all or part of the ALJ's decision in developing the ITC's final determination.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with NVIDIA.

The agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of integrated circuit (IC) products offered by NVIDIA. In addition, the two companies have settled all outstanding claims, including resolution of past use of Rambus' patented innovations. The term of this agreement is five years; other details are confidential.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced it has acquired privately-held Unity Semiconductor, an innovative memory technology company for an aggregate of $35 million in cash. As part of this acquisition, the Unity team members have joined Rambus to continue developing innovations and solutions for next-generation non-volatile memory. This acquisition will expand the breadth of Rambus' breakthrough memory technologies and will open up new markets for licensing. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the acquisition and it has closed.

In a landmark development, the US Government invalidated the last of three of Rambus' claims to key patents that saw it locked in successful patent-infringement lawsuits against the likes of NVIDIA and Hewlett-Packard, among others. The three patents are related to memory chip design, and are among the most valuable patents held by Rambus. An appeals board at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) declared the patent invalid on January 24, according to a ruling posted on their website. The previous two were declared invalid in September, 2011.

The Barth patents have been used by Rambus to sue a long list of companies in the PC industry, including NVIDIA and AMD. It has been used to extract millions of dollars in licensing fees from the likes of the already cash-strapped AMD, through settlements. NVIDIA's patience seems to have paid off. Rambus can appeal the latest decision from the PTO. "We're evaluating our options," said company spokeswoman Linda Ashmore.

If you're Rambus then this is the season to be… making money through settlements. That's right, the XDR creator has scored a new out-of-court victory as Broadcom has agreed to sign a patent license agreement that spans five years.

"We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Broadcom, a global leader in the semiconductor industry," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "We are committed to continuing the development of innovative technologies to help our licensees deliver great products to the market."

As early as in September, we heard reports of AMD toying with Rambus XDR2 memory on its next generation of high-performance GPUs. Apart from our own community's response, that news met with a wall of skepticism as it was deficient in plausibility. New reports from Chinese websites have raised the topic again with fresh rumors that AMD will attempt to implement XDR2 on some of its next-generation ultra-high end products after all. XDR2, according to Rambus, can transport twice the amount of data per clock as GDDR5.

Apparently AMD and Rambus have had much more cordial relations with each other, than other companies the latter engaged in patent disputes with. In 2006, AMD settled outstanding disputes with Rambus by willing to pay licensing costs for certain technologies claimed by Rambus, turning a leaf in the relations between the two. What Chinese sources are suggesting now, is that AMD will design its high-end GPU (codename: "Tahiti") in a way that will let it support both GDDR5 and XDR2. Certain higher-end SKUs based on Tahiti will use XDR2, while the slightly more cost-effective SKUs will use GDDR5.

Rambus is the company best known for suing dozens of companies over memory patents that it holds and is suing so prolifically, that many just see this company as a patent troll. It has been accused many times of obtaining submarine patents while a member of the JEDEC group until a decade ago, which it is now fraudulently using to try and extort royalties from every other company using DDR memory and its derivatives. Unfortunately, those lawsuits didn't stick, encouraging Rambus to carry on enthusiastically. Rambus won patent fights against NVIDIA and Samsung for example, who now have to pay them ongoing royalties. However, it looks like Rambus may have bitten off more than it could chew, because it has just lost a $4 billion antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology Inc and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, erasing more than half of the chipmaker's value as investors abandoned its stock in droves. Rambus stock immediately plunged more than 60% on this good news.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with Freescale Semiconductor. This agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations for memory controllers and serial links in a broad range of logic integrated circuit (IC) products offered by Freescale. In addition, the two companies have settled all claims between them including resolution of past use of Rambus' patented innovations. The term of the patent license agreement is five years. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

"Freescale is the global leader in embedded processing solutions, and this agreement demonstrates the strength of our patented innovations for both memory controllers as well as serial links," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "With our commitment to innovation, we will continue to develop breakthrough technology which helps our licensees make great electronic products that deliver the richest consumer experience."

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has renewed its patent license agreement with Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723). Renesas Technology Corp. and NEC Electronics Corporation, merged in April 2010 to form Renesas Electronics. This agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of logic integrated circuit (IC) products offered by Renesas Electronics. Specific terms of the agreement are confidential.

"This license with a global leader of the semiconductor industry represents continued validation of the strength of our patent portfolio," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "We have enjoyed a long and positive relationship with Renesas Electronics, and we are pleased to renew this important agreement with one of the top five semiconductor companies."

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced that it has renewed their patent license agreement with Elpida Memory, Inc., Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). This agreement covers Elpida's range of memory products including SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR5 DRAM.

"We are extremely pleased to have licensed another one of the top three memory companies. This agreement continues our licensing momentum and renews a winning partnership that has produced best-in-class memory solutions for customers," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "Elpida's customers now have the full benefit of licensed products using our patented innovations to enrich the consumer experience of electronic systems."

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced it has filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) requesting the commencement of an investigation pertaining to products from Broadcom Corporation, Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., LSI Corporation, MediaTek Inc., NVIDIA Corporation and STMicroelectronics N. V. The complaint seeks an exclusion order barring the importation, sale for importation, or sale after importation of products from Broadcom, Freescale, LSI, NVIDIA and STMicroelectronics that infringe certain patents from the Dally1 family of patents, and of products from Broadcom, Freescale, LSI, MediaTek and STMicroelectronics that infringe certain patents from the Barth family of patents. In an earlier investigation requested by Rambus, the ITC found that these same Barth patents were valid and infringed by NVIDIA products, and issued an exclusion order in July of this year.

"We have been attempting to license these companies for some time to no avail. One of the respondents frankly told us that the only way they would get serious is if we sued them. Others pursued a strategy of delay rather than negotiate a reasonable resolution," said Harold Hughes, president and chief executive officer at Rambus. "Rambus has invested hundreds of millions of dollars developing a portfolio of technologies that are foundational for many digital electronics. There is widespread knowledge within the industry about our patents including their use in standards-compatible products accused in these actions. In fairness to our shareholders and to our paying licensees, we take these steps to protect our patented innovations and pursue fair compensation for their use."

Patent troll Rambus is at it again, this time suing IBM to reverse ruling on a memory system patent dispute after the US Patent and Trademark Office intervened in an earlier case ruling that IBM's patent 2002 memory controller-related patent applications weren't infringing on its IP. Rambus maintains that US Patent Office's ruling that gave a clean chit to IBM was in error.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in the federal court in San Jose, California, Rambus said the US Patent and Trademark Office erred through a series of decisions in finding that a patent application assigned to IBM did not interfere with its own patent obtained at the end of 2002. "The board committed errors of fact and law in its orders, decisions, and judgment," Rambus said in its complaint.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, and NVIDIA, the worldwide leader in visual computing, today announced they have signed a patent license agreement related to certain memory controllers.

Under the agreement, Rambus has granted NVIDIA a patent license for certain memory controllers at a 1 percent royalty rate for SDR memory controllers and a 2 percent royalty rate for other memory controllers, including DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4, and portions of GDDR5 memory controllers. NVIDIA has granted no licenses to Rambus.