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Complaint - Nvidia v Rambus

Complaint - Nvidia v Rambus

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Published by gesmer

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Published by: gesmer on Jul 23, 2008
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06/25/2009

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THEMIDDLE DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINANVIDIA CORPORATION,Plaintiff,v.RAMBUS, INC.Defendant.______________________________________))))))))))Civil Action No.1:08-CV-473
JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
Plaintiff NVIDIA Corporation, upon personal knowledge as to itself and uponinformation and belief as to all other matters, by and through its undersigned attorneys,brings this complaint against Defendant Rambus, Inc. and its agents, and in supportthereof hereby alleges as follows:
INTRODUCTION
1. This action arises from Rambus Inc.’s (“Rambus” or “Defendant”)anticompetitive acts and practices whereby Rambus, through deliberate and intentionalmeans, shoplifted an industry standard relating to the manufacture of common forms of dynamic random access memory (“DRAM”) with the intent of engaging inmonopolistic conduct with regard to DRAM technologies. By putting together amemory architecture portfolio and purposefully withholding information regarding thescope of its patents from the relevant standard setting organizations, Rambusaffirmatively acted to anticompetitively bias the DRAM standard-setting process and,subsequently, illegitimately profit from technologies over which it now claims patent
Case 1:08-cv-00473 Document 1 Filed 07/11/2008 Pae 1 of 38
 
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rights, patents that are incorporated in over 90% of the DRAMs sold in the UnitedStates and worldwide. NVIDIA seeks to put these illicit gains to an end and to preventfurther victimization that has occurred as a direct result of Rambus’ acquisition of monopoly power.2. Rambus first implemented its scheme by becoming a member of the JointElectronics Devices Engineering Counsel (“JEDEC”)—the highest standards settingorganization of the industry—in the early 1990s. JEDEC’s purpose is to influence andmonitor the evolution, development and adoption of industry standards for SynchronousDRAM (“SDRAM”).3. Rambus, as a member of JEDEC, encouraged the standards body to adoptas the de facto industry standard what it believed to be the future for memory interfacetechnologies, a technology it called Rambus DRAM (“RDRAM”).4. To help ensure that its vision was brought into being, Rambus used itsmembership in JEDEC as a platform from which to slow the development of competingmemory standards and to block competing technologies that threatened what Rambussaw as its opportunity to establish RDRAM as an industry standard.5. When RDRAM failed to become the industry standard, Rambus setanother plan in motion that it hoped would guarantee huge profits in spite of its failedbid for industry standard status. By abusing the knowledge gleaned through its JEDECmembership, Rambus began expanding its patent portfolio to include patents thatcovered various SDRAM technologies, thus ensuring that Rambus patents wouldremain profitable even if Rambus technologies were not industry standards.
Case 1:08-cv-00473 Document 1 Filed 07/11/2008 Pae 2 of 38
 
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6. Rambus actively participated in JEDEC’s standard setting proceedingsand engaged in a pattern of bad-faith, deceptive conduct, which was exclusionary innature and calculated to undermine competition and cause harm to manufacturers whopurchased DRAM technology. Through its knowing and willful omission about itsownership of various patents and other instances of bad faith and deceptive conduct,Rambus created and maintained the materially false and misleading impression that itdid not possess, nor would enforce, any relevant intellectual property rights whichcould undermine JEDEC standards.7. Rambus maintained its silences and spun its illusion of disinterest withregard to the memory standards until the industry was “locked into” the technology, atwhich point Rambus broke its self-imposed to silence to assert its claims in itsheretofore unannounced patents and to leverage such ownership for its own immenseprofit.8. These false impressions proved to be exceedingly harmful; indeed,Rambus’s acts of deception constitute exclusionary conduct under Section 2 of theSherman Act, and demonstrate that Rambus unlawfully monopolized the markets forfour technologies incorporated into the JEDEC standards. Further, such exclusionaryconduct subverted the standard-setting process and lead to Rambus’ acquisition of monopoly power, thus neutralizing the pro-competitive benefits of standard settingprocesses generally and the JEDEC organization in particular.9. Rambus also engaged in a concerted document destruction program tocover its tracks. Indeed, Rambus’s document destruction plan and its subsequent
Case 1:08-cv-00473 Document 1 Filed 07/11/2008 Pae 3 of 38

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