Nvidia said on Tuesday the U.S. Patent Office has found that 17 patent claims asserted by chip designer Rambus are invalid, one step in a dispute over whether Nvidia infringed Rambus technology.

Nvidia said that it would offer the findings to an International Trade Commission judge in Washington, D.C., which is weighing the validity of the Rambus claims against Nvidia. Nvidia had requested the review of Rambus' patents.

The ITC judge is expected to make a decision in January that will serve as a recommendation to the full ITC. The ITC could bar imports from Nvidia's overseas suppliers if it finds the imports to violate Rambus patents.

The dispute began in June, 2008, when Rambus filed suit in federal court in San Francisco charging that Nvidia had infringed 17 patents.

The lawsuit alleged that a number of Nvidia products with memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM infringe 17 Rambus patents, according to the company. The accused products in the complaint include chipsets, graphics processors, media communication processors, multimedia applications processors and other products from at least six Nvidia product lines.

Last July, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected an additional eight claims challenged by NVIDIA in two patents that Rambus has asserted against it in the litigation, Nvidia said.

The other nine patents formed the basis of the action that Rambus brought before the ITC. Rambus has since dropped claims on four of them.

For additional information, visit http://investor.rambus.com/litigation.cfm