AMD and Rambus Renew Patent License Agreement

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second largest supplier of central processing units and leading vendor of graphics processors, and Rambus, on Wednesday said that the two companies had renewed patent licensing agreement and that AMD and its ATI unit will continue to pay Rambus for its DRAM patents.

The original term of AMD’s agreement runs through the end of September this year. The renewal extends the patent license through the third quarter of 2015. Under the agreement, Rambus granted AMD a patent license for its integrated circuit and circuit board products. Under the agreement, AMD will continue to pay Rambus a license fee that will be determined at the end of 2010. This license fee is payable each year in quarterly installments.

“We are pleased with AMD’s decision to renew and look forward to further opportunities to align the interests of our companies. This agreement will continue to provide AMD customers the full benefit of licensed products using our patented innovations to enrich the consumer experience of electronic systems,” said Sharon Holt, senior vice president of licensing and marketing at Rambus.

Rambus owns numerous patents related to memory and logic interfaces, memory architectures, and system design. Although many DRAM vendors believe that a lot of such patents were obtained illegally during Rambus’ participation in industry-standard setting organization called JEDEC, a lot of companies pay royalty fees to the Los Altos, California-based company. Other companies, including one of AMD's main rivals Nvidia Corp., are in process of legal actions against Rambus.

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