Intel and Micron Inc. In the past year, 96% of its revenue came from licenses. Rambus licenses its technologies to customers who take these technologies and further develop them and integrate them into systems that are sold to consumers. Examples of such systems are the PS3, laptops, and netbooks. The technologies include memory controllers, memory components, memory modules, and memory systems. NVIDIA sells GPUs and has been doing so since 1990. Rambus filed a complaint that Nvidia's use of chip technology infringed on several patents that Rambus holds. The complaint, filed on July 10, 2008, charged NVIDIA Corporation with infringing seventeen Rambus patents, though two of these claims were dropped. The fifteen patents considered in this case fall into one of two groups: those filed by Michael Farmwald and Mark Horowitz, the founders of Rambus (described in the case as the six 'FH' patents), and nine patents claiming technology invented by Richard Barth and/or Frederick Ware, (the "Barth/Ware" patents). The complaint alleges, for each of the patents-insuit, that NVIDIA has directly infringed the patents "and/or has contributed and continues to contribute to the literal infringement and/or infringement under the doctrine of equivalents . . . and/or has actively induced and continues to actively induce others to infringe [the patents-in-suit]." Rambus sought monetary and injunctive relief, including treble damages and attorneys' fees due to defendant's willful infringement and the "exceptional nature of this case." The day after Rambus filed the patent lawsuit, NVIDIA filed an antitrust lawsuit against Rambus in the middle District of North Carolina. In December, 2008, the North Carolina court transferred NVIDIA's antitrust action to United States District Court for the Northern District of California on the grounds that NVIDIA's antitrust claims properly belonged as counterclaims to Rambus's patent infringement claims in this case. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered consolidation of the two cases. On November 6, 2008, Rambus filed a complaint against NVIDIA in the United States International Trade Commission alleging infringement of the nine Barth/Ware patents. On December 4, 2008, NVIDIA moved to stay litigation on all of Rambus' infringement claims, on the ground that the ITC proceeding automatically stayed litigation on the Barth/Ware patents pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1659, and that, inter alia, the FH patents involved many of the same products involved in the ITC proceedings. Procedural history On November 13, 2008, the court denied the defendant's motion to strike