(RTTNews) -  Memory chip maker Rambus Inc. (RMBS: News ) said Monday that Judge Richard A. Kramer of the San Francisco Superior Court has recommended the company to coordinate its antitrust case against certain memory manufacturers and the Tessera Technologies antitrust case against Hynix and assign them to the San Francisco Superior Court. At the hearing on November 6, the judge has clarified that he would recommend coordination so long as it does not delay the commencement of the Rambus antitrust jury trial on January 11, 2010.

Los Altos, California-based Rambus is a technology licensing company engaged in designing, developing and licensing chip interface technologies and architectures. The antitrust case in question was filed in 2004, alleging defendants Hynix, Micron and Samsung engaged in a concerted and unlawful effort to eliminate competition and stifle innovation in the market for computer memory technology and computer memory chips.

Consistent with the judge's statements, the company said it is preparing to start the trial in January. "--we look forward to confirmation from Judge Kramer when he returns to court next week," noted Thomas Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel of Rambus.

Among recent legal matters, in June, Rambus reached a tentative settlement with the European Commission, in a case against it for alleged violation of European Union competition law, filed in 2007. The case was from certain DRAM manufacturers who alleged that Rambus misled the industry and a standards body JDEC by not divulging its patent plans regarding synchronous dynamic random access memory while SDRAM-related standards were crafted.
RMBS closed Monday's regular trading at $16.72, down $1.38 or 7.62%, on a volume of 6.33 million shares. In after-hours, the stock picked up $0.38 or 2.27%, to trade at $17.10.

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by RTT Staff Writer

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