SERIAL LITIGATION COMPANY Rambus Inc. is once again suing a company for patent infringement. Unsurprisingly enough the target today is the Green Goblin itself, Nvidia. The suit centres on 17 patent infringements related to none other than... memory controller interfaces (bet you weren’t expecting that). Every bit of tech from SDR up to GDDR3 will have some way infringed on Rambus IP.

In a public statement Rambus says that for the last 6 years Nvidia has infringed their patents, and it’s fed up trying to get them to comply. It has now decided to pursue the matter legally all the while being chummy enough to leave the door open for a (fast cash) settlement.

“Graphics and multimedia products require leading-edge memory performance, and as NVIDIA advances its product portfolio, it infringes more and more of our patents. We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions. Nevertheless, we hope to continue discussions with NVIDIA to reach a negotiated settlement." said Tom Lavelle senior veep and General Counsel at Rambus.

Apart from the damages, it is also asking the US District Court for a permanent injunction against Nvidia.

Hynix, Samsung, Nanya, Inotera, Micron are all names that have been screwed, sorry, sued by Rambus in recent years. This string of victories tends to aggravate the situation, as they strengthen the base for the following case. We’d honestly like to see how much money Rambus Inc. has made to date in court. The Rambus site even has a trophy room dubbed “Litigation Update” just for these things, you know?

Kicking Nvidia while it’s down (considering it’s just bitten that $150/$200 million bullet) will probably generate some sort of blowback, but Rambus seems increasingly confident that this “we’re suing but willing to settle” attitude will sort things out toot-de-sweet.

We wonder what the lawyer-to-engineer ratio is at Rambus, these days. µ