http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ne...cense_agreement

Nvidia, Rambus Settle Patent Dispute, Ink Five Year License Agreement
Posted 02/08/2012 at 11:26am | by Paul Lilly

Rambus, a memory technology licensing company, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with GPU maker Nvidia that will be valid for the next years. As part of the five-year deal, the two sides agreed to settle all outstanding claims against each other, ending what had become a bitter and stretched out legal dispute over various patent innovations.

"This is an important license agreement as it settles our differences and allows us to move forward with Nvidia, the leader in visual and parallel computing," said Harold Hughes, president and chief executive officer at Rambus. "Looking forward, we have the opportunity to focus on developing innovative solutions in concert with our licensees to help bring compelling, innovative products to market."

Other terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Nvidia spokesman Hector Marinez told The Wall Street Journal his company was "pleased to settle the matter on terms that are fair and logical" to Nvidia.

Rambus and Nvidia have been battling each other for over three years. Count this as purely speculation, but Nvidia likely got the better end of the deal on this one. The settlement comes just a few months after Rambus lost a $4 billion antitrust lawsuit against Micron and Hynix, which promptly sent the company's share price free-falling by more than 60 percent. With the legal tides seemingly turning against it, it's possible Rambus figured that any settlement was better than no settlement.