A US APPEALS COURT has overturned an anti-trust violation ruling against legal firm Rambus.

The Federal Trade Commission had ruled that Rambust failed to tell the standard-setting organisation, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Committee (JEDEC), about its patented technologies. Rambus wanted those technologies to be set as a new standard.

When the JEDEC accepted this, Rambus considered it had a monopoly and ordered people using the standard to pay up. The FTC subsequently ordered Rambus to stop collecting the patent cash.

However, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that what Rambus had done was not actually monopolisationising.

Rambus general counsel Tom Lavelle said all his outfit was doing was enforcing its intellectual property rights against "a group of manufacturers who want to use our intellectual property without paying for it".

The FTC told Reuters that it was considering appealing. This one will run and run. µ

L'Inq
Information Week