Well the ruling is in, Nvidia infringes import of all Nvidia's infringing items is banned in the US (thats EVERYTHING they make btw) and current stocks may also be banned I haven't finished reading it yet :P
What does this mean? Not much right now as for the next 60 days they can use EU imports (Rambus can only charge 40cents per unit made there) after that if their appeal fails Nvidia profits will take a nose dive while prices are forced higher to make up the fees.

If true then that picture is actually a highly accurate rendition of the current AMD CEO's face. This is bad news for us as 'demand' will now push up the prices of ATI cards if Nvidia can no longer compete.

the , an [url=http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/7/27/rambus-wins-patent-suit-against-nvidia/]article on it :P
technically yes they're banned in the US but due to how the appeal system works nothing will be done about it for 60 days as they can just pay EU rates while the appeal is going through
What Nvidia is being very careful not to mention is they will have to back pay all they owe this quarter (the case is over 2 years old so even if we say $0.40 per card since the G92 thats a LOT of cash) unless they can get the last 3 patents invalidated.
I actually thought i had linked the order must have forgotten
just looked it up the complaint goes back 8!! years i forsee Nvidia shares being available for pennies once the markets realise this

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8nnsNr85dqVuZxnCiIF6_8BiDjgD9H71MKG0
according to this nvidia will be able to sell their products...

Thats the appeals process in action while they appeal (60 days) they can carry on as normal as i noted above.

This is bad news for an already shitty graphics card market. Competition is key. One company isn't going to compete with itself.

It's not actually going to have much real world effect except to Nvidia share prices, alot of nvidias profit has just gone bye bye in 2 seconds flat. ATI/AMD however has been paying the royalties for years now so we'll finally get to see what the real market difference is between them.

I suppose the most likely outcome is Nvidia paying a substantial sum to Rambus to keep their cards in the US market. Still, things weren't exactly going in Nvidia's favour before this. It's certainly not going to help matters.

I really don't know how well they've been doing business-wise as of late, but they still seem to have a lot of customers using their products according to Steam. Hopefully, that will hold them over, as I prefer competition as well. (I also used both companies products since they started and have no complaints regarding either.)

Alot of Nvidias business is still G92 based (a chip originally known as the 8800GT and now the 310GT i think it is) they were 6 months late to DX11 with an overpriced, over hot and hard to make chip. Their new GF104 is actually pretty good until you realise ATI could undercut it at any time it wanted to as the 58xx chip is smaller and cheaper to make. ATI is currently supply limited I dont see a price cut until that ends then they will kill the 460

Nvidia numbers on Steam are largely made up of 6800, 7800 and 8800 cards which while never exactly cheap did offer the best performance at the time. At the moment though people are looking to upgrade to DX11 and ATI's marketshare is slowly increasing thanks to cards like the 5770.

At worst for Nvidia they'll just have to start paying royalties to Rambus, including historical payments they missed, they won't have their stuff banned from the US unless they're complete idiots about it, which they're not. I still run a 8800GS, but going to upgrade soon, most likely going to ATI.

I'd expect the bulk of the damage to Nvidia's share price has already been felt, as investors tend to factor in these kinds of scenarios a bit in advance (and looking at Nvidia's stock it's tumbled quite a bit over the last three months, although historically the stock has also been a bit of a rollercoaster, so there are probably multiple factors at work).
One thing that strikes me as something a bit odd about this case is that the USPTO rejected all of Rambus' claims against Nvidia, but then the ITC chose to uphold a few of the claims despite this. It should be noted that this suit actually isn't even in the courts yet (the reported decision is an ITC ruling), so this still has a very long way to go. Additionally, Rambus has been (and currently is) the target of both FTC and European Commission investigations on price-fixing and other anti-competitive practices (and have had some the royalties they can charge capped as a result of this), so there's lots and lots going on here that probably won't be settled until after the patents in question have expired.

If this results in an ATI-only graphics card market, I'm gonna be pissed. We need competition.