EU regulators drop investigation into Rambus as US company strikes deal to reduce royalties

EU drops antitrust case against Rambus

BRUSSELS — European Union regulators on Wednesday dropped an antitrust investigation into U.S. memory chip company Rambus Inc. after the company pledged to cap royalty fees for DRAM memory chip patents.

Rambus, based in Los Altos, California, will avoid any EU fines by pledging not to charge any royalties for SDR and DDR chip standards and to bring fees for newer versions of DDR down from 3.5 percent to 1.5 percent for five years.

The European Commission in 2007 charged Rambus with monopoly abuse, alleging that the company set “unreasonable” royalties for DRAM patents fraudulently set as industry standards.

Any company that wants to make DRAM, or Dynamic Random Access Memory, has to pay Rambus for the design it developed. The chips are used in personal computers, servers, printers, personal digital assistants and cameras. Worldwide DRAM sales were $34 billion last year.