Memory chip company Rambus Inc and EU antitrust regulators said yesterday they had provisionally agreed that the EU would drop a probe and any fines if the company reduced its royalty rates for Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) memory chip patents.
The European Commission charged Rambus with monopoly abuse in 2007, alleging that the company set “unreasonable” royalties for DRAM patents fraudulently set as industry standards.
Any company that wants to make DRAM has to pay Rambus for the design it developed. Rambus said it would now cap the fees it charges for licenses over five years for certain memory types and memory controllers.
The EU said Rambus had also promised that any future fee cuts would benefit the entire market. Worldwide DRAM sales were US$34 billion last year.
The EU must check with other industry players that this satisfies antitrust concerns before the deal can be finalized.
This would end the company’s antitrust disputes on both sides of the Atlantic over allegations of patent abuse. Rambus said last month that the US Federal Trade Commission had dropped a similar probe.
Chip manufacturers said that Rambus was seeking royalties in the early 1990s even as it took part in industry-wide talks that set standards for chips that were to be made mandatory — giving the company a monopoly over key technology patents.
Los Altos, California-based Rambus has consistently denied wrongdoing.
Rambus was last year cleared of these charges by a US federal court that dismissed legal action by chipmakers Micron Technology Inc of the US, Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of South Korea, and Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) of Taiwan.
They said Rambus had deliberately withheld information from the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council, which counted Rambus as a member as it established guidelines for the computer memory industry.
The European Commission said standard setting bodies “should be encouraged to design clear rules” that foster the open, transparent and nondiscriminatory selection of standards.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
STIMULUS PLANS: An official said that China would increase funding from special treasury bonds and expand another program focused on key strategic sectors China is to sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds this year to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official told a news conference yesterday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalize its faltering economy. Special treasury bonds would be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da (袁達), deputy secretary-general of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. “The size of ultra-long special government bond funds will be sharply increased this year to intensify and expand the implementation of the two new initiatives,” Yuan said. Under the program launched last year, consumers can
TECH PULL: Electronics heavyweights also attracted strong buying ahead of the CES, analysts said. Meanwhile, Asian markets were mixed amid Trump’s incoming presidency Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) shares yesterday closed at a new high in the wake of a rally among tech stocks on Wall Street on Friday, moving the TAIEX sharply higher by more than 600 points. TSMC, the most heavily weighted stock in the TAIEX, rose 4.65 percent to close at a new high of NT$1,125, boosting its market value to NT$29.17 trillion (US$888 billion) and contributing about 400 points to the TAIEX’s rise. The TAIEX ended up 639.41 points, or 2.79 percent, at 23,547.71. Turnover totaled NT$406.478 billion, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. The surge in TSMC follows a positive performance
FUTURE TECH: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would give the keynote speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which is also expected to highlight autonomous vehicles Gadgets, robots and vehicles imbued with artificial intelligence (AI) would once again vie for attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, as vendors behind the scenes would seek ways to deal with tariffs threatened by US president-elect Donald Trump. The annual Consumer Electronics Show opens formally in Las Vegas tomorrow, but preceding days are packed with product announcements. AI would be a major theme of the show, along with autonomous vehicles ranging from tractors and boats to lawn mowers and golf club trollies. “Everybody is going to be talking about AI,” Creative Strategies Inc analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “From fridges to ovens
RSS