This post was written by Michael A. Carrier. Carrier is a Law Professor at Rutgers University School of Law in Camden.
In December 2008, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a petition for certiorari in the Rambus case. There are two central issues in the petition. First, what is the standard of causation needed to connect deceptive conduct with the acquisition of monopoly power? And second, do higher prices in standard-setting organizations (SSOs) present competitive harm?
As the D.C. Circuit articulated the facts in In re Rambus, 522 F.3d 456, Rambus developed and licensed computer memory technologies. Between 1991 and 1996, the company participated in the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), a semiconductor engineering SSO. In 1993 and 1999, respectively, JEDEC approved a synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) standard and a double data rate (DDR) SDRAM standard that included technologies over which Rambus asserted patent rights. In 1999, Rambus informed DRAM and chipset manufacturers that it held patent rights over technologies included in the standards and that the continued manufacture, use, or sale of the products constituted infringement.