In 2006, the FTC found Rambus guilty of unlawfully monopolising computer memory markets through deceptive conduct, in particular by not disclosing its patents to standards-settings organisation, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC).

But the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (CADC) said: “The Commission failed to demonstrate that Rambus’s conduct was exclusionary under settled principles of antitrust law.”

Having reached that conclusion, the court also expressed its “serious concerns about the breadth the Commission ascribed to JEDEC's disclosure policies and their relation to what Rambus did or did not disclose”.

The decision came less than a month after a San Francisco jury rejected claims by three rival companies – Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology – that Rambus had breached antitrust laws by not revealing its patenting activities to JEDEC.

On March 27, the jury found that the three companies had not met their burden of proving antitrust and fraud claims, according to a Rambus statement.

In a statement responding to the FTC’s petition to the Supreme Court, which was filed last Monday, Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus, said: “We are not surprised by the FTC's filing and we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will confirm the decision of the CADC.”

Lavelle, who said the company plans to file its response shortly, added: “I note that the rulings of the FTC's administrative law judge, the CADC and a federal court jury in March of this year confirm that our position is the correct one.”