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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. administrative law judge handed technology company Rambus Inc. (RMBS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) a legal victory on Tuesday, dismissing government charges that it illegally monopolized key computer chip technologies.

In a one-sentence order released late in the day, Administrative Law Judge Stephen McGuire said he had rejected the charges filed by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the company duped the industry into adopting its own patented computer chip technologies as standards.

McGuire did not release details of the decision. Rambus said in a statement that the judge's 330-page initial decision explaining the ruling is expected to be made public on Monday of next week.

"Today's ruling dismissing the FTC case is a fundamentally important step for Rambus as we seek to be fairly compensated for the use of our intellectual property," Rambus General Counsel John Danforth said in a statement.

In after-hours trading on the Nasdaq, Rambus's stock rose more than 10 percent to $28.50 in the wake of Tuesday's decision.

The FTC had sought to deny Rambus the billions of dollars in royalties it could reap from computer chip manufacturers such as Micron Technology Inc. (MU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (000660.K: Quote, Profile, Research)

Rambus's attorney has countered that computer chip makers were to blame for the dispute because they had tried to expropriate Rambus's superior technology.

At issue is technology used for computer memory. In 1990 Rambus filed for a patent for a new memory technology called RDRAM. But it subsequently became a member of an industry group called JEDEC, which was trying to agree on standards for another memory technology called SDRAM.

The FTC had cited a half dozen instances in the mid-1990s in which they said the company had secretly applied to amend its RDRAM patent to cover technologies that JEDEC was considering for SDRAM.

They said Rambus executives had misled JEDEC officials when they asked if the company had patented key technologies.

Rambus had maintained it never did anything to violate JEDEC's rules.    Continued ...

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