ANTI-TRUST POLICY/PATENTS : COMMISSION DROPS CASE AGAINST RAMBUS.

The European Commission, on 9 December 2009, concluded its investigation into the alleged abuse of a dominant position in the market against the American dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip manufacturer Rambus Inc, accused of applying excessive royalties for some of its patents. The Commission announced its decision to make legally binding the commitments made by Rambus Inc, which set a ceiling on the patent royalty rate for semiconductors for use in DRAMs.

The Commission had initially thought it was possible that Rambus had infringed EU rules on abuse of a dominant position in the market (Article 102 of theaTreaty on the Functioning of the European Union, TFEU)(1) by claiming abusive royalties for the use of the patents of these components, which are used to store data temporarily, for example in personal computers.

Rambus had contributed to the setting of new industry standards, without stating that it had patents that would be affected...