It's always interesting to see how the stock market reacts to patent news. Pharmaceutical shares commonly yo-yo on the news of patent grants, wins against generic companies and expiry of major patents. However, until yesterday, I had not see any major share price movement in the semiconductor field.
Rambus has been fighting a patent battle with a number of companies concerning technology used in memory chips. Rambus had previously been accussed of misleading standards bodies (the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) about their patented technology. A jury in the US has now decided that this was not the case as the New York Times reports. There was no misleading of the other participants.
Rambus share price jumped $7.25, or 39 percent, to close at $25.86 on the news.
The major loser is bound to be Hynix Semiconductor which was found to infringe Rambus patents in 2006 and had damages of $133.6M awarded against it. Another one of the companies involved, Micron Technology announced that it would be appealing the decision as announced in a press release.
How this affects the EU's case against Rambus anti-competitive behaviour (reported here) is not yet recorded.
