Legal News

Samsung, Rambus Settle Patent Claims; Rambus to Get $900M

By Ashby Jones

Just a few moments ago, stocks on the NASDAQ started trading. Most were down. But not that of technology-maker Rambus, whose stock was soaring.

And why not? After all, news broke Tuesday that Rambus and Samsung had set aside their differences over a patent dispute concerning memory chips. Under the terms of the settlement, Samsung will pay as much as $900 million over five years to the Los Altos, Calif.-based Rambus. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the Bloomberg story.

Under the agreement-which includes new technology collaboration between the companies-Samsung will make an upfront payment to Rambus of $200 million, plus quarterly payments of about $25 million over five years, the companies said. Samsung also agreed to buy $200 million worth of newly issued Rambus stock. An initial $25 million payment to Rambus would immediately double its quarterly revenue.

And more might be on the way. Jay Koo, an analyst at Kyobo Securities, said there is now a higher possibility that Hynix Semiconductor may also settle with Rambus. Rambus sued Hynix, Samsung and Micron Technology of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to boycott Rambus technology.

Hynix spokesman Park Hyun said Wednesday the company is still awaiting trial and didn’t elaborate further. Micron couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Rambus was repped by a collection of lawyers at Munger Tolles and McKool Smith. Weil Gotshal’s Matt Powers, who recently tussled with the judge in the Microsoft/i4i patent case, led the way for Samsung. He was joined by lawyers at Weil, Orrick Herrington and Townsend & Townsend & Crew. End of post

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).