Slashdot Mirror
Micron sues Rambus for antitrust violations
darkrot writes "According to the Micron website, Micron is suing Rambus for violations of antitrust laws, as well as asserting its non-infringement and the invalidity of Rambus' patents." So far Hitachi and Toshiba have settled with Rambus. Toshiba still makes RAMs, so its settlement with Rambus was odd in that it could only spur on Rambus to sue more people. This suit might reduce the attraction of business models based on generating patents and suing, rather than bringing products to market. Update: 08/29 07:03 PM by S :Oops: "settled with Rambus" not Micron.
None, Rambus doesn't make anything therefore cannot violate any patents the suit is about antitrust laws and also asserts invalidity, non-infringement, and non-enforceability of Rambus patents pursuant to a number of different bases.
Segfault sues Slashdot posters over fake lawsuit posts
DISASSOCIATED PRESS - Dozens were shocked today as popular geek humor site Segfault sued numerous posters to popular geek new site Slashdot over posts which they claim "directly infringe upon our content".
"Segfault has long since been the home for parodies of lawsuits. Why, even recently we had to politely hint that we've been recieving too many!" commented resident Segfault PR hack Bymer Klairich, "As such, if others create their own lawsuit parodies, this will severely damage our ability to ship our own version of the product. Effective immediately, we're going to shut those freeloaders down!"
Aside from "firewalling ports", "using block lists", and various other technical-sounding terms of various feasability, Segfault plans to begin enforcing its patent on fake lawsuits.
"Patent INT_MAX - 4, 'Method for cheap laughter involving legal parody of the USPTO' is clearly in violation here. As soon as we end the current fake lawsuit we're facing over it, we plan to prosecute these posters to the fullest extent of the law."
-Denor
especially when the suggestion has some merit, although we don't need to shoot Micron.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I don't like that at all! I don't want to have to wonder why, even though we created Rambus, it keeps trying to save us.
"Maybe there's a little bit of Rambus in all of us."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Sorry, saw Godzilla 2000 recently, couldn't help it)
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
This suit might reduce the attraction of business models based on generating patents and suing, rather than bringing products to market.
Hey, no one's allowed to do that without paying me royalties!
Method and Apparatus for Business Model to Acquire Revenue with no Innovation or Societal Contribution of Any Kind
U.S. Patent #6,251,666
Step 1: Generate a bogus business-model patent, like this one.
Step 2: Sue everyone else who accidentally uses it.
However, resistance to the tactics by Rambus, and testing that proves Rambus is inferior to DDR SDRAM, the entire Rambus concept has soured. Intel is stuck with either a dead elephant on its back, or a legal situation resulting in breach of contract (I'd root for the latter, since Rambus may die soon anyway). If you have something to say to Rambus, send it here. If you have something negative to say, don't flame; instead, explain why Rambus is inferior, and better yet, cite examples.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
DDR-RAM is easily the next generation of memory technology if you look at the specs. RDRAM has problems with latency and production that SDRAM never had. And, if you make a chipset that uses dual channels(like the i840 chipset does with RDRAM) DDR will blow away anything Rambus has to offer with less heat, less latency and reduced cost due to more efficient production. However, if RAMBUS wins the lawsuits with Infineon and Micron, then they will be charging royalties for the technology. As far as I've read, they are charging higher royalties on DDR then they are charging for RDRAM. If that's the case, then prices for DDR will go up, and if they manage to get pushed higher then RAMBUS mem, who is to say which will be on top. I will never buy that RDRAM crap, but the sheep in the world probably will.
There, that's better. Figures, only previewed for the HTML.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Different company. They own part or eachother, but this company is Micron Technoligies, and the company selling PCs is called Micron Electronics. I got to see the fab facilities in Boise once. They're very cool.
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
SENGAN!?!?!?
Where have YOU been?
Damn....
http://www.electronicnews.com/news/4466-242NewsDet ail.asp
8 055.html
A little wager: They won't settle, and Rambus will win in court. Not fair, but patent law seldom is.
BTW, with regard to MU and Rambus, it's personal:
http://www.wsaccess.com/theStreet/tech/semis/72
---
Kid: "Mr. Owl, how many lawsuits does it take to get to the center of Slashdot?"
Owl: "Let's find out... One.. Two.. Three [CRUNCH!]. Three.
The world may never know...
Why does it seem like latley the only news coming out of technology today is some sort of litigation? Three posts on lawsuits in one day? That's got to be a record. No offence (and you can mod me down if you want to), but has it come to "No news is good news, unless it's court related"? I would rather talk about what these comanpies are releasing then what these companies are doing to each other. Just my opinion...
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
A light-nanosecond is exactly .299792458 meters, or about one foot, for those not up on it.
>There is a big difference between your two example systems. Rambus is bumping up against the speed of light, your sewer system is not.
Good god, I hope the bizarre mental imagine this is creating is not being forced upon the rest of the readers.
On the other hand, sanitation workers can now discuss topics that were once solely in the realm of theoretical physics.
"Ok, normally a town needs huge waste pipes, but if we modify toilets by adding super dense toroids moving at 99% of the speed of light, in opposite direction of each other, we should be able to create a wormhole....."
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Just wait until all the pissed interdimensional beings come for dumping all our shit on them...
Yes. You can expect a letter from my lawyer concerning the emotional trauma you caused me by subjecting me to your so-called 'signature'. The unexpected thought of that evil individual has caused me much emotional distress, and has affected my work performance.
And I'm not a fan of Hitler, either.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Every corporation (for some reason that still eludes me) tends to incorporate in Deleware. Don't ask me why, since almost *none* of them have their HQ in the state. (For an example of this Deleware habit, look at the MPAA vs. 2600 legal documents that have the full listing of the plaintiffs-- almost all of them end with a statement along the lines of "a corporation lawfully incorporated in the state of Deleware".)
My personal guesses so far?
A. It's cheaper to register as a business in Deleware (Wow, look Mr. CEO, we saved $5 on this business registration, won't our investors just LOVE that!).
B. Something to do with tax laws perhaps?
C. Something to do with more favorable state laws with relation to business?
If anyone has any ideas as to why 75% of businesses incorporate in Deleware, I'd be curious to know the *real* answer.
As for the lawsuit: I'm glad someone is finally fighting Rambus on all of it's BS-- claiming to own patents on technology that has been around and in use this long is utterly absurd, especially considering how Rambus acquired those technologies (EG: JEDEC).
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
"Don't even think about mixing vendors on the same board"
Until very recently Samsung was the only one making any real quantities of RDRAM (for the PC market, Toshiba is producing for the PS2) so multivendor compatability hasn't really been tested.
i'm damn sure that i'm going to use micron ram in my next upgrade. i'm sick of this patent bulls**t and am glad that someone is standing up to it.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
People hate Rambus because there was an attempt to force it down their throats when nobody wanted it. Thankfully that effort was largely crushed and is a good deal of the reason why AMD is doing so well these days.
After that didn't work, Rambus went out and started suing SDRAM makers, with the basic idea being to get royalties for no real reason other then that they own patents which they shouldn't own in the first place. They wanted to make money off their overpriced Ram, and that didn't work, so now they want to make money off the backs of the SDRAM makers without actually doing anything to earn it except for having aggressive lawyers.
Yeah, thats really the kind of thing we want to encourage.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Does this include Transmeta?
No it isn't. If it was flamebait, where are the flame responses? I just expressed my support for anyone going to court against (as the slashdot story said) a company who's business plan involves getting a patent and sueing people.
11*43+456^2
...cause I can find a better use for gold than I can for that proprietary load.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Going back to my MWRA analogy, it's like wrapping turds in maxipads and flushing them. It's an unnecessary waste.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
As soon as I read this, I thought of the MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, those kooks in control of our sewers) making a similar change to the sewer system (not that they have, thank god.)
Imagine that they change the sewer pipe diameter from the standard size (1 to 2 meters, I think, I've never been in a sewer pipe, thankfully) to something 1/4 the diameter. Their primary purpose is to watch the turds shoot out with high velocity at the end. Of course, this introduces much sewage backlogging and latency, and would result in 5 toilet explosions daily. The pipes are lined with stainless steel and cost $90,000 per 5-meter length; about 3 million of these would be installed throughout the MWRA's jurisdiction of the Commonwealth. The MWRA, of course, would claim that the speed of the flying turds should highly outweigh the backlogging and explosion problems. Nevertheless, disgruntled MWRA customers would plan for a "Boston Turd Party."
Just a vivid (and hilarious) analogy.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Different speeds of RDRAM; makes upgrading a thousand-dollar nightmare.
High-latency hardware (in the ideal computer, NO hardware should have any noticeable latency!)
Proprietary standards; obviously, Rambus is attempting to cash in by forcing it on us.
THAT'S why I hate Rambus.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I should start a spoof site with that. I got a pretty good logo idea: merge two circles to form a full moon and have "arse" in it.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Anyone care to put a link to any site / slashdot article / whatever with more information? Who started suing who, over what?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Micron's always displayed a fair bit of spunk for a RAM maker, especially when somebody disses them but also when they see a chance to put the boot in.
:)
This ought to be very interesting
Does anyone know any real details?
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Rambus is just evil plain old evil but then again we have been over all of that here. Let's hope the judge makes the right ruling and words it broadly enough to make the patent office pull it's head out.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
The "problem" is that Rambust owns patents on SDRAM. They were part of the JEDEC committee, while at the same time patenting the core technologies being finalized. If this isn't conflict of interest, I don't know how else to define it. The biggest problem with Rambust is not that it is expensive, but that it doesn't work well. The technology is immature and flaky. Don't even think about mixing vendors on the same board. Also, it is not only the PC-800 that has problems. It is not like SDRAM, whereby faster chips run better in slower systems. There are problems across the board. It's just that Rambus isn't so popular that these problems have not come out. If you buy a Rambus-based system, buy one from a first tier vendor, or you'll be sorry.
I don't know if these two corporate names sound funny to you, but hearing Micron vs. Rambus sounds alot like Godzilla vs. Mothra.
For example, "Rambus was resting deep beneath the ocean, the warm salty waters healing it after its fight with Mothra. Soon, though, the citizens of Tokyo would be rushing frantic through the streets. Why? Unbenownst to them, an evil Sony game developer, trying to learn the secret of MS's new Xbox gamestation, opened the case of a development version of the Xbox, stolen from Redmond.
Sadly, the Gatesians had rigged all development copies of the Xbox with a failsafe device, that would irradiate every chip inside the box as well as anything within a 20 foot radius.
Within that 20 foot radius was the developer and a small fly that flew onto the Xbox's main CPU when the radiation hit. Thus born of the radiation was "Micron", a 50 foot fly with the brains of a Pentium III.
And as monsters are wont, Micron began destroying and gobling up small software and hardware companies throughout Tokyo, eventually awakening Rambus from its sleep to emerge from the ocean deeps to fight Micron in the streets of Tokyo."
No more caffiene for me today. Thanks.
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I don't see this suit discouraging many companies from this business model. Licensing patents is a bit like playing the stock market--it is risky and you could lose your shirt, but there are big potential payoffs.
Unlike individual investing in the stock market, though, a company with no real costs (just lawyers to track the licenses) does not have much to lose.
I've been waiting for this one to drop. Now, if it would just squish Rambux then we can all enjoy cheep DDR SDRAM in a few months! ;-)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have a complete system that I purchased from Micron, and I have only good things to say about it.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
RAMBUS chose it's first attacks carefuly to make it's claim seem stronger than it is. Toshiba is the main supplier of RDRAM for Nintendo. They were offered a "sweet" deal on royalty to cave. Hitatchi was prepared to fight it out, and had counter-sued in much the way that Micron is now, but they were set to sell their memory business, and to close the deal they had to settle. Note that Hitachi's settlement becomes null and void when it changes ownership. The next RAMUS suit was against a foreign company, that will be at a disadvantage in the wacky US federal courts. Now they face a real monster, Micron, a REAL company with REAL engineering, REAL assets, REAL production that could buy or bury RAMUS in REAL assets many times over.
In 2000 America, is a non-lawyer truly free?
Delaware has the largest body of case law relating to corporate matters of any state in the US, hands down. Therefore, if you incorporate in Delaware, you will know what the law is going to be with a good degree of certainty. If you incorporate in Wyoming, there is going to be a lot less case law, putting you at the mercy of a judge flying blind at trial with little or no precedent to guide him.
Have you sued someone today?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
They're probably incorporated in Delaware. Better tax laws, particularly for LLC's.
Hitachi and Toshiba bowed before Rambus because the extortion is negligble compared to legal costs and perceived PR cost.
Intel held/holds stock in Rambus (read: conflict of interest)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I believe it is because of Delaware's more friendly laws towards incorporating businesses. A very large percentage of national corps incorporate in Delaware because the laws there favor them if they ever get sued by customers. I'm unsure how this would affect a corp vs. corp legal battle, but it's moot in this case as the suit was filed in federal court.
Mainly, I'm curious over what patents were supposedly violated...
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
There is also a story at SemiBizNews and here
Course when I submitted it this morning it was rejected within seconds. Odd thing that.
And the Correct answer is ... C
Delaware is a very friendly state to businesses
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Try looking at http://www.delbusinc.com/del7-3.html
The patents others are supposedly infringing are that Rambus were part of the working group that came up with (DDR) SDRAM. While participating they also happened to patent most of the core technology...
Now that their RDRAM technology is failing market interest, due to high cost and flaky functionality, they sue SDRAM manufacturers to bring SDRAM prices up to RDRAM levels.
although I submitted it a lot later, hehe.
:-)
Apparently these things get pretty queued up, so the first person to submit it may have done so a long time ago.
Ah well, I'm still happy with the one story that got posted with my name attached to it.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I was seriously dismayed that RAMBUS, seeing that it's technology was losing the battle badly, decided that if they can't win, they are going to try to extort revenues out of all other DRAM manufacturers. I was shocked that Hitachi and Toshiba buckled without much of a fight; numerous corporations have been making SDRAM for years before RAMBUS came on to the scene. I'm putting my money on DDR SDRAM for the next generation RAM technology, as it's cheap and higher performance that the expensive, high-latency, high-clocked serial RAMBUS modules.
"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
There sure seems to be alot of hate towards Rambus... the way I see it, the company has a crappy product (not fully developed at best). And they got alot of other large companies to buy in to their idea and now those other companies (Hitachi and Toshiba to name a few) are pissed off because the product isn't all it was advertised to be.
This isn't a case of a little old lady being sold bunk stock in a gold mine in the Yucatan. It's a couple of hightech corps that should have done their due diligence. If anything I'm mad at Hitachi, Toshiba, Intel et al for falling for this all this Rambus bullshit and then trying to make us pay them for their mistake.