Rambus lose $3.95 billion jury trial against Micron and Hynix

Rambus have lost a $3.95 billion jury trial over their allegations made against Micron Technology and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. They claim that both companies conspired to prevent Rambus memory from becoming an industry standard.

Due to the outcome of this trial their company worth dropped 78 percent.

The state jury in San Francisco today voted 9-3 against Rambus claims that Micron and Hynix are liable for colluding to manipulate prices of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. Rambus claimed that this violated California antitrust law. The Jurors have been deliberating this case since September 22nd.

Harold Hughes, president and chief officer at Rambus said “We are disappointed with this verdict as we believe strongly in our case. We do not agree with several rulings that affected how this case was presented to the jury and we are reviewing our options for appeal.”

Rambus say they could have made $3.95 billion in royalties without the alleged conspiracy. Under California law if the jury had voted in favour of antitrust damages for that amount then it would have tripled to almost $12 billion.

Bloomberg Businessweek added “After trading resumed at 3:40 p.m., Rambus fell as much as $14.04 to $4.00 and Micron rose as much as 25 percent to $6.84.

After the verdict, the jury left the courtroom without taking questions from the press.

“The antitrust case was certainly a cornerstone of the investment thesis I had on Rambus,” Jeffrey Schreiner, an analyst at Capstone Investments Inc. in Menlo Park, California, said in an interview. Schreiner has had a “buy” rating and $50 price target on Rambus shares. “With this court decision, it becomes a lot harder to achieve that goal.”

He said the stock may fall to $10 in light of the decision, and that he's dropping coverage of the stock.”

Kitguru says: An expensive outcome for Rambus. Will their memory go down in history as a ‘might have been'?

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