One of three patents by a technology patents, which has been used by firm Rambus against its rivals for infringement cases, has been invalidated by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
The "Protocol for Communication with Dynamic Memory" patent, numbered 6,591,353 was not deemed genuine as it made references to a’memory device.
The lawsuits were decided in Rambus’ favour in July of 2010.
Again in early 2011, Rambus filed a new ITC complaint accusing a number of companies with infringement of up to six patents.
The three patents are collectively known as the Barth patents, and the one in question talks about time-multiplexed slave-master data transfers during different clock cycles.
The settlements earned Rambus millions of dollars in terms of settlement fees.
Westerman, Hattori, Daniels and Adrian law expert Scott Daniels told the Reuters that there was no way Rambus could appeal against the USPTO stand, as it would be appealed back to the examiner who would not most likely disagree against the members of the appeals board.
In a November 16 court ruling, Rambus lost $4bn lawsuit against Micron Technology and Hynix Semiconductor.
