‘Rambus has beaten Hynix Semiconductor in its patent infringement case, with a court ordering its rival to pay $306.5 million in damages.

A jury found that Hynix had infringed 10 of Rambus’ patents in a verdict announced on Monday in [the United States] district court in San Jose, [California]. The award covers compensation for Hynix sales in the United States between June 2000 and the end of 2005, according to a Rambus statement. Hynix may also have to pay interest on the amount awarded in the verdict.

The verdict will likely send shivers through a PC industry already skittish about patent lawsuits. It will also likely prompt the settlement of similar suits.

Memory designer Rambus had alleged that Hynix and other large memory manufacturers infringed its patents in producing DDR DRAM — the most common type of memory in PCs today — as well as in making SDRAM and DDR2 DRAM. The vast majority of PCs and servers produced in the past several years use one of these types of memory, and variants of DDR are expected to be incorporated into PCs for the next several years.