Rambus Patent Claims Partly Dismissed; Shares Fall (Update1)
By Phil Milford
Richmond, Virginia, May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of Rambus Inc., a designer of high-speed computer chips, fell as much as 9 percent after reports a federal judge threw out all but three of 57 patent-infringement claims against German rival Infineon.
U.S. District Judge Robert Payne, presiding over a jury trial in Richmond, also said he would consider later this week a request from lawyers to dismiss the remaining claims, said company officials and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Rambus stands to gain as much as $1 billion in royalties and fees if it wins the case.
Payne late yesterday ruled that Los Altos, California-based Rambus failed to prove most of its case against Infineon, based in Munich and 71 percent owned by German electronics giant Siemens AG, according to the Times-Dispatch and information posted on the Web site EBNews.com.
``Even if one of the claims survives, that still could be enough for Rambus to continue to charge royalties to the rest of the industry,'' said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst for market researcher Insight64.
The company said it remains optimistic about winning the case.
``You can look at it as the glass being half full or half empty,'' said Gary Harmon, Rambus's chief financial officer. If you prove one claim, ``you've won your case,'' he said.
A jury ruling that Europe's No. 1 chipmaker infringed the patents could set the stage for licensing and royalty fees of up to $1 billion for Rambus in the $30 billion-a-year memory chip market, analysts have said.
In his bench ruling yesterday, Payne said only three infringement claims involving two patents could go to the jury, the Richmond Times-Dispatch said. He also barred Rambus from claiming intentional infringement, the newspaper reported.
Shares of Rambus, which reported $72.3 million in fiscal 2000 sales, fell $1.14 to $15.86, a drop of almost 7 percent, in midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares earlier touched a 52-week low of $15.20. American depositary receipts of Infineon, with about $6.4 billion in fiscal 2000 sales, fell 5 cents to $42.61 on the New York Stock Exchange. |
