The US Patent and Trademark Office has initially rejected all of the patent infringement claims made by Rambus against Nvidia. In all, the trigger-happy memory maker claims that Nvidia's GPUs have infringed on 17 separate patents. The alleged infringements span across a multitude of products, including those with memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR and GDDR3 SDRAM.
The case was first opened in June of last year and has been on-going since. Rambus has brushed off the rejections, saying that the patent office's reaction is a part of the process. It's a procedure they know all too well, having spent $300 million on legal disputes with chip makers since 2000. While this battle has resulted in a loss, Rambus feels that the war is far from over.
The company is ultimately seeking royalties on memory circuits used in Nvidia's products. Rambus has been awarded millions in past suits, so there's no telling how things will turn out with the pending case; but we'd love to hear your predictions.