Alexei Oreskovic

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Traders Ride Rambus Lower

Alexei Oreskovic

Rambus (RMBS Quote) fell in heavy trading Friday as investors fretted about its suit against Korean competitor Hynix Semiconductor.

Shares of Rambus were down as much as 17% during the session and finished at $16.71, down $1.02, or 5.8%. Volume was 9 million shares, more than four times the average.

The flurry came a day after a federal judge accepted Samsung's guilty plea in a related price-fixing case. In its deal with the Justice Department, Samsung, the world's largest maker of memory chips, agreed to pay a $300 million fine for conspiring to fix memory chip prices. Hynix agreed to pay a $185 million fine earlier in the year, while Infineon Technologies (IFX Quote) has agreed to pay a $160 million fine.

Rambus is involved in patent infringement litigation with Hynix in federal court in San Jose. While there have been no recent developments in Rambus' patent case, some investors may have interpreted the fact that Judge Ronald Whyte has not thrown out a motion by Hynix to dismiss the trial, particularly in the wake of Thursday's news, as a bad sign.

"I think it's pure speculation," said WR Hambrecht analyst Daniel Amir, who has no positions or business relationships with Rambus.

"People are just waiting for a ruling," said Amir. "And the stock trades on speculation."

In a case more closelyl tied to Thursday's events, Rambus is also involved in a separate antitrust suit against Hynix, as well as Samsung and Micron(MU Quote), in San Francisco district court. That case is based in part on the price-fixing allegations involved in the government's criminal investigation of the memory makers. But the distinction between the two cases may have been lost on some traders.