Litigant extraordinaire Rambus (RMBS) has slapped writs in the face of graphics chip company extraordinaire, alleging that the firm has ridden roughshod over 17 of its patents.

Rambus is a firm famous in the annals of IT recorded history for making money by designing stuff and then carefully watching, like a hawk, for the slightest breach of the patents it owns, hiring lawyers (attorneys) and going to court.

It's alleging in a California court that Nvidia (NVDA) has breached patents covering graphics processing, visual effects, chipsets and a heap of other stuff. Nvidia (NVDA) does not use the term chipsets but if a central processing unit (CPU) is the brains of a computer, a chipset is the brawn, while a graphics processing unit (GPU) are the eyes. The chassis is the body, the hard drive is the funny bone, wires are the ganglia, and the power switches are the kidneys of a computer.

Rambus said it had been a very patient Rambus and had tried to negotiate with Nvidia (NVDA) for six years to no effect. It had done so in good faith but in  the end has thrown its toys out of its intellectual memory PRAM (perambulator).

Patents in computer technology can be likened to the human liver, even though the comparison is, at best, tenuous.. X