By Megan Ma

A jury awarded Rambus Inc., a Los Altos-based designer of high-speed computer chip interfaces, $306.9 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit against South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc. on April 24.

The six patents under contest involved standard PC memory chip technology known as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which increases the speed of memory in computer chips. The jury found all 10 Rambus patent claims relative to the six patents at issue in the trial valid and infringed.

“What is so significant is that this is the first time after being in litigation (with Hynix) for five years that we’ve been able to present our patent position to (a) jury. It’s the first time a court has validated our patents,” said Rambus public relations spokeswoman Linda Ashmore.

Hynix originally filed the case in August 2000, when the company sued Rambus in an effort to have 11 of its patents declared invalid. Rambus countersued claiming that Hynix’s use of technology infringed on Rambus patents.

In pretrial proceedings, U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte ruled that Hynix infringed on some Rambus patents.

He ordered that the remaining claims should be tried in front of a jury in a San Jose federal court.

Rambus said the award represents compensation only for Hynix memory products sold in the United States between June 2000 and the end of 2005.

Rambus asked for a permanent injunction against Hynix to stop the manufacture, use, sale or import of Hynix memory products. That request isn’t likely to be decided until after a third phase of the case, addressing Hynix counterclaims, is tried this summer, according to a company press release.

The company has not won all its patent battles. In March 2005, patent infringement claims against Infineon Technologies AG were dismissed after a federal judge in Virginia learned that Rambus destroyed documents in anticipation of the case. The two companies settled a few weeks later, with Infineon agreeing to pay Rambus a quarterly license fee of $5.85 million through 2007.

Rambus has similar suits pending against Micron Technology Inc. of Boise, Idaho; South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan’s Nanya Technology. Rambus also has filed antitrust suits against those three companies.

For more information, visit www.rambus.com.