Rambus chips are used in video game consoles, personal computers and other electronic goods.
"One loss by Rambus would probably bring this sequence to a close, " Semico's Merritt says.
If Rambus proves it holds patents on these, all PC-memory makers would have to pay it royalties.
Mooring was previously president of Rambus Labs and before that an executive at Intel for a decade.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne is now considering a motion to throw out Rambus' remaining complaints.
Rambus technology was supposed to be the only memory-interface technology to work with Intel's forthcoming Pentium 4 processor.
For Rambus , the devil is in the details -- the contract details.
Rambus was one of dozens of companies investigated by the SEC for allegedly allowing executives to backdate their stock option grants.
While the exact amount of the royalties Rambus hopes to get remains confidential, estimates suggest royalties range between 1% and 2%.
The Rambus army of patent attorneys is marching on and heading toward bigger targets, each potentially more menacing than the last.
Essentially Rambus has taken on the easier targets first, but with Infineon it moves up the ladder to bigger DRAM suppliers.
Micron recently received a big boost as a California court ruled in its favor regarding an anti-trust case brought on by Rambus.
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Three Japanese companies--Hitachi hit (nyse: hit - news - people), Toshiba and Oki Electric--have settled patent claims with Rambus.
Micron is also a strong promoter of DDR memory, which Rambus can't help but see as a potential threat to its RDRAM memory.
Should Rambus prevail against Infineon, either in open court or through a negotiated settlement, that would leave Micron as the next logical target.
Industry analysts say Rambus can expect a fight from bigger companies like Infineon, and probably from Micron as well, should it come to that.
"You can't fault Rambus for trying to make the most out of their patents, " says Steven Cullen, a DRAM analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group.
Should Rambus make its patent claims stick, the cost of the commodity DRAM business, which already operates with razor-thin profit margins, will be greater.
Infineon, Micron Technology (nyse: MU - news - people) and Hyundai of South Korea have all disputed Rambus' claim to the technology.
"The Rambus claims are so broad they will have to be decided in court, " says Bob Merritt, an analyst at Semico Research, a Scottsdale, Ariz.
Rambus, which had counted on a surge in royalties from the Pentium 4 launch, is now going after other royalties on both SDRAM and DDR.
Investors and industry insiders alike are watching the Rambus-Infineon matter closely.
Rambus originally sued Infineon claiming patent infringement on two kinds of PC memory: SDRAM, which is commonly used, and DDR, a newly developed type of memory.
Rambus claims Infineon is violating its patents on two kinds of computer memory, known as synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), and Double-Data Rate DRAM (DDR).
Rambus' legal maneuverings are taking place against the backdrop of continuing bad news from its biggest ally, Intel intc (nasdaq: intc - news - people).
Kroes and her team, for instance, probably won't recall Barnett's comments with reverence and careful consideration when they are looking over pending antitrust cases like that of Intel, Rambus and Qualcomm.
Also on the earnings front today, Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Nokia ( NOK), Potash (POT), Juniper Networks ( JNPR), Rambus ( RMBS), and Starbucks ( SBUX) are scheduled to release their quarterly reports.
FORBES: U.S. Stock Futures Higher After Fed; Netflix Upgraded to Buy at Citi
But memory manufacturers have balked at having to make bigger, more expensive Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) chips when their existing lines of SDRAM were beginning to turn profitable after an industrywide downturn.
The ruling on Wednesday tossed out a fraud conviction against Rambus for withholding information from a chip industry consortium, which adopted Rambus' protocols for memory transfer without knowing Rambus had patents on the technology.
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