As a company with no chip production facilities of its own, Rambus basically conducts its business by filing patents and then squeezing money out of other companies through licensing deals. Continuing with this practice, the company has now filed a lawsuit against Nvidia for allegedly infringing 17 of their patents.
Specifically, a number of chipsets, graphics processors, and media communication processors across six different Nvidia product lines are allegedly infringing on patents related to memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM. Rambus is asking for an injunction to stop Nvidia from selling the products in question, as well as monetary damages.
The lawsuit comes a week after Nvidia said it would take a charge against second-quarter earnings of $150 - $200 million to cover the expected cost of repairing and replacing "significant quantities" of faulty chips.