Court rejects suit against Hynix by U.S. rival Rambus

Hynix Semiconductor, the world’s No. 2 computer memory chipmaker, said yesterday that a U.S. court rejected an antitrust lawsuit filed by Rambus against the Korean chipmaker.

Last November, a San Francisco jury ruled that Hynix and Micron Technology of the U.S. were not involved in illegal actions to prevent Rambus from expanding into the chipmaking market.

The latest ruling by the Superior Court of the State of California confirmed the jury’s decision, taking the pressure off Hynix as it could have been forced to pay out as much as $1.2 billion in compensation to Rambus.

“Hynix welcomes the ruling and will do its best to prepare an argument against potential appeals [by Rambus],” Hynix said in a statement. Rambus can legally file an appeal within 60 days.

Rambus, a Sunnyvale, California-based company that licenses its technology to chipmakers, filed the complaint in 2004 against Hynix, Micron and Samsung Electronics, accusing the three chipmakers of illegally colluding to keep Rambus’ technology from gaining a foothold in the chipmaking market.

Samsung Electronics reached an out-of-court settlement with Rambus in 2010, with an agreement that the world’s top memory chipmaker will pay Rambus $700 million through 2015. The ruling is widely seen as giving support to Hynix at a time when its Japanese rival Elpida is suffering from financial problems.

Signs that the ailing DRAM market is rebounding, coupled with Elpida’s financial woes, led share prices of Hynix to jump 5.26 percent on Wednesday. DRAMs are mainly used in personal computers. Yonhap