Rambus, Infineon Settle Claims
Five years of litigation ended Monday when
Infineon
(IFX)
agreed to pay
Rambus
(RMBS) - Get Report
about $47 million over two years for a worldwide license to its memory-chip technology.
The license covers existing and future Rambus patents and patent applications for use in Infineon memory products. In exchange, Infineon will pay a quarterly license fee of $5.85 million starting by Nov. 15, 2005, through Nov. 15, 2007. It could face an additional $100 million in payments after that.
Infineon also gets an option to acquire other licenses, and it granted Rambus a fully-paid perpetual license for memory interfaces. The two companies agreed to the immediate dismissal of all pending litigation and have released each other from all existing legal claims.
Rambus has for years pressed patent claims against Infineon, as well as
Micron
(MU) - Get Report
and
Hynix
. But it suffered a legal setback earlier this month when the patent claims against Infineon were dismissed by a federal court in Virginia.