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Rambus going after AMD & Transmeta
zakath writes "This story on Techweb is telling us that Rambus' legal dept. is still working overtime - going after Transmeta and AMD this time." Well, its trickier then that. They're trying to reach out of court deals, but the article has a lot more info about Rambus and assorted acronyms that they're trying to get money for.
Top 10 New Ram Types
10. FFRAM - (Fucking Fast RAM.)
9. RFFRAM - (Really Fucking Fast RAM.)
8. OWWIRAM - (Only works with Intel RAM)
7. NCWACSRAM - (Not compatible with any chip sets RAM.)
6. STGTLHRAM - (Sure to get the ladies hot RAM.)
5. FETSTIRAM - (Fast enough to surf the internet RAM)
4. WKHIWWSYCRAM - (We know how it works, why should you care RAM)
3. IYHTAYCAIRAM - (If you have to ask then you can't afford it RAM.)
2. INRFBIHALARAM -(It's not really fast but it has a long acronym RAM)
1. YPDNMTFBYFWBIRAM - (You probably don't need memory this fast, but your friends will be impressed RAM.)
Are Rambus devices allowed to have :Cues on them, or would there be an Intellectual Property reaction?
They'll probably just end up cutting a deal, but RAMBUS has patents on not just DDR-SDRAM, but SDRAM itself! They have some ridiculously broad patents that should never have been approved in the first place; hopefully this will get struck down due to *obvious* prior-art.
I think it's sad that Intel has these losers around to do their dirty work for them. Remember, "When you can't compete on technical merit, sue!"
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Your only risks? Your patents might be overturned. Solution: hire more lawyers, tie it up for years. Oh, and antitrust. Solution: hire more lawyers.
Ugggh.
Never meant half of the things I said to you. So you know, there's a half that might be true - G. Phillips
I'm guessing it was said in order to scare other companies from joining the suit against Rambus since they cannot hope to win all these suits against SDRAM makers if their combined legal strength is wielded. "Let those other companies take the risk of not getting licensed. We do, afterall have responsibilities to our stockholders."
Hopefully, the RAM makers will see what Rambus has done and never, ever trust them again!
end of line
Sad when it can cost MUCH less to pay off the idiot suing you. It's also sad to see the cost it takes to be able to win in a court. Our legal system is so silly sometimes, remember when an accident was an accident and not a settlement? Neither do I.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
If that's the case, that would be a direct violation of the anti monopoly laws. It's the same deal as "Ford trucks can only use Ford gasoline", but this time it's "Only our chips (or liscened ones), and use our RAM".
-The Tempest
It's good to see some high profile lawsuits over bad patents. Too often it's the little guys being hit over the head with patents. Sure, they may be plainly bogus, but if you can't afford tens of thousands in legal bills, you're hosed. This time all the players are on roughly equal footing. With any luck, one of them will lobby Congress to review the situation with patent law.
In which industries are intellectual property and patent laws beneficial to the industry and consumers?
Two industries come immediately to mind -- pharamcutical companies may benefit from patent law, and publishers (of music, software, and books) may benefit from traditional copyright law. Both industries share a number of characteristics.
First, the initial development costs of both are relatively high. Pharamucital companies claim an initial cost of $500,000,000.00 to develop a new drug, and the development of a readable book, working software, or decent music requires a significant investment of time on the part of the author.
Second, the marginal costs of production are often relatively low. Once a drug has passed through the expensive approval process, the marginal cost of producing each individual dose is generally many times less than the sale price of the drug. Similarly, once a book has gone through the expensive process writting, editing, and typesetting, the marginal cost of printing is generally much less than the sale price of the book.
The third (and significant) similarity is that if the use of intellectual property were unrestricted, the majority of initial development costs would only be incurred once, by the original developers (I'm sure economists must have a word for this). Without intellectual property protections, once a drug has been developed and gained approval, no company producing the drug would have to go through that development cost again. Similarly, once a book has been published, no company copying that book would have to pay the cost of authoring, editing and typesetting again. Protecting the initial producer seems to be the primary justification for the existance intellectual property laws.
But there is a fourth similarity, and one which seems to usually go unnoticed. In both industries, it is possible to create a derived work without infringing on the intellectual property of the original work -- both have extremely liberal fair use laws (or very limited intellectual property protections, depending on how you look at it). For example, Visicalc had a copyright on their spreadsheet's code, but their intellectual property did not extend to preventing other people from creating a competing spreadsheet -- the idea of a spreadsheet is not, itself, intellectual property. I could not photocopy The Shining and then sell that copy, but I certainly could write a book about a crazy guy working as a hotel caretaker -- the idea of a book about a crazy guy is not, itself, intellectual property. I couldn't record "Blue Suede Shoes" and sell the album without paying royalties (and learning to sing), but nothing prevents me from singing a rock-n-roll song about shoes. And, of course, I could not start manufacturing and selling Viagra, but nothing prevents me from developing another vaso-dialator (sp?) with turgidity effects.
Unfortunately, the intellectual property gaffs we read about every day on Slashdot have no similarity to publishing or pharmacuticals at all, but escpecially to point four above -- the notion of "derived work" in software and hardware patents is being abused unfairly, and the patent office is allowing it to be abused. Many high-tech patents are far too broad, and are a deterent to innovative works. Or, in many cases (like one-click shopping) intellectual property protection has been granted for something with very low initial development costs, but very high marginal costs (the majority of the cost to innovate one-click was probably spent pushing through the legal paperwork for the patent application, and the development is probably far, far cheaper than building large and robust e-commerce site).
I think that intellectual property rules that allow RamBus to strong arm its competitors this was have a chilling effect on the entire industry, and have no reasonable benefit to anyone.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
BTW, I got the link from The Savvy Analyst, which calls AMD the "Best Stock Available". (Full disclosure: I'm long AMD, big-time.)
They managed to win all the suits that Intel brought against them and I don't think that Jerry is going to fold his hand just because some bunch of hoohas bring another one. Rambus has to be getting desparate at this point. Intel has all but dropped sponsorship and their P4 chips are not flying very well. If this is where American industry is going with bullcrap IP suits over everything, its going to be a sad commentary. Also if I remember right, IBM has an earlier patent that is perhaps more applicable to the technology.
I recall similar info about the JEDEC membership terms. Yet, if there was in fact a contract which bound participating JEDEC members to forgo patent and technology protection then why has no one challenged RAMBUS' patent claim? Especially the JEDEC members?
If RAMBUS willfully entered into a contract, either written or verbal, which specified those terms and they reneged on the contract, then I would assume that there is legal standing to prosecute them for Patent fraud or somesuch.
If I sign a contract saying I will not patent something, then go ahead and apply for a patent anyway and manage to get the patent approved... What are the terms which render a patent invalid other than 'prior art'? I thought the 'prior art' thing was before the approval anyway.. once a patent is granted can it be taken away?
My head hurts now. Either way I still think we should hunt down the people in RAMBUS who are responsible for this corporate greed and lack of business ethics and have them anally raped by an angry Armenian War-Goat.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
-1 Flamebait to you CmdrTaco, for posting this story. We know what happens whenever anyone mentions Rambus.
In online shopping today I noticed that Anandtech now has a Rambus system in their dream configuration. He says that Rambus and SDRAM are approaching price parity, mostly because the price of SDRAM has been going up. Is Rambus' plan succeeding?
It is probably essential for them to take on all possible adversaries in these legal battles.
Ok, I know the standard story being repeated here, they were a member of that working group, patented stuff when they were under ?contract? not to, left group, blah blah blah. And I know that they are currently an IP only company.
But I want to know from someone authoritative, whether or not they actually did any real work upon which their patents or based, or did they fund work that helped develop the tech that their patents are based on, OR (and these are the most likely ones in my mind) were they founded by other tech companies to manage their jointly shared IP, OR did they buy out the IP from other companies.
I mean, if they had outright stolen ideas then presumably there would be someone out there who would be suing them, or if anyone else had developed the tech, surely they would have had the patents and such.
There has GOT to be something that isn't mentioned. I mean, I don't like Rambus simply because they are trying to force feed us crappy technology, but that's a Management thing. Are we certain that they don't deserve to have the patents?
If that working group was collaborating on stuff, and if Rambus was contributing information but patenting it behind everyone's backs, that's one thing.(*) But it's not quite the same thing as patenting something one didn't develop. And I think in our zeal to hate Rambus ( it's easy to do, with them being such idiots ), we're assuming the worst.
I mean, sometimes it sounds like a small town telephone gossip circle in here.
Psst, did you hear so and so was making out with so and so?
Psst, did you hear so and so was fooling around with so and so?
Psst, did you hear that so and so was screwing around with so and so?
Psst, did you hear that so and so was screwing so and so?
TTFN
(*) - Ok, we all agree it sucks for consumers and for the other companies that were in the working group that ended up adopting the tech and then get screwed 10 years later paying royalties.
Its the modern way. According to modern business and patent practices, they did great. Their stockholders love them, the lawyers are happy, just us consumers picking up the tab, as usual, and we don't count where it counts.
The patent office doesn't want to reform anything, that would mean fewer patents and fewer fees. The legal system doesn't want to reform, that would mean less laws and/or less lawyers. The companies don't want to reform, most are just pissed they didn't think about this first and are busy looking for a scam they can pull...
Until "unethical" behavior is punished, the rest is just standard practice of playing games with legal language and looking 'for angles'.
If JEDEC members don't sue the *&^@#%#@ out of RAMBUS for fundamental violation of the spirit, if not the letter of their agreements, its over. The modern patent system just makes it easy to collect.
What I want to know is, why didn't JEDEC do anything substantial???!?
Multi-Level Industry AnalRape Technology Capable of Extortion Revenue Transfer Rate of $1.6 Billion per Second
Santa Clara, CA - September 30, 2000 - Rambus Inc. (Nasdaq: RMBS), the leading provider of high bandwidth lawsuit-generating bogons, today unveiled its new multi-level AnalRape technology at the end of a 3-day executive offsite beerfest. The Legal AnalRape Torture (LART) technology enables Cease & Desist transfer rates of 1.6 Lawsuit Announcements per second (Laps), twice Rambus' current AnalProbe technology and four times the fastest demonstrated Digital Convergence devices.
In 1992, Rambus increased the rate of conventional legal larceny tenfold by locking the billable clock rate of their lawyers to 120hours/wk and then increased the clock rate by a factor of five the next year by transferring a gram of crack to each cube per clock cycle. The Rambus AnalProbe Engine (RAPE) accomplishes the transfer of two grams per clock cycle and is commonly referred to as double donged reaming (DDR) technology. Today, Rambus has again pioneered high-speed extortion and larceny with its breakthrough multi-level LART technology. LART combines the patented double donged reaming (DDR) technology along with multi-level ethical breaches to transfer four grams per clock cycle in order to achieve unprecedented commodity C&D rates of 1.6 Laps.
"Toshiba has gotten LART from Rambus and we are to deliver insane amounts of crack to them or else," said Yasuo Morimoto, president and CEO, Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor Company. "Toshiba is the leading technology supplier to the consumer and communications memory markets and we shouldn't have to take this shit. Unfortunately Rambus' huge pair of brass balls make me feel warm & squishy."
"Our development team has produced test business models that have proven the technology is stable and producible and we are now ready to fuck with partners and plant this fabulous technology right in their nuts," said Dave Mooring, President of Rambus Inc during . "Rambus' objective is to stifle innovations that will kill the semiconductor and systems industries. Once our objective has been reached we will have a monopoly in place that Bill Gates would envy. We are pleased to continue our role in screwing the industry in memory and chip connections technologies."
When asked for further comment Mooring cackled, "I'm gonna be rich! RICH! You hear me you bastards?! I got the 3l337 business model. I know Lawyer Kung-Fu. I wi11 0wn y3w!" and then proceeded to pass out face-down in a pool of his own vomit.
meebs
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
Yes - I ordered the 649D system. :-)
I want to emphasize this bit - and it's the bit to emphasize to politicians. If RAMBUS stole this technology from JEDEC in violation of a contract, but the wronged parties are afraid to sue, the system is broken and rewards lawsuits but not actual research. The market is bound to take note, and innovation will (at the least) slow.
There has to be something that can stop Rambust from consuming the entire computer world with its cursèd hands. Perhaps there should be a litigation against them that their patents should be null and void due to their vagueness. Any lawfirms game enough to undertake this would certainly get my stamp of approval.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
>RAMBUS is the Microsoft of the RAM industry
That would imply that they have a profitable product. Right now they're just a tool of Intel. Notice that Intel is actually offering RDRAM rebates to lower the cost of P4s when they come out.
I'll agree that both have some sleazy business practices, but the embrace, extend, and extinguish model is a far cry from the patent and sue model, which is really a tool of the supporting company, Intel.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
This is just another lame attempt by Rambus to control the memory market as they tried to do a couple of years ago. They've realized nobody is going to buy their over-priced memory that has no significant performance increase over much cheaper SDRAM and that since the memory industry is developing an alternative, DDR SDRAM, the high-speed memory market may become constrained for them.
Just as a little aside, Rambus doesn't manufacture anything. Nothing. They hold intellectual properties on most forms of RAM (due to that nasty JEDEC business), but they only control the ability to manufacture their ideas.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
The trend in the U.S. seems clear: the definition of "intellectual property" is broadening, and the restrictions placed on the general public as a result are increasing. This will probably continue, and this means that it will get more difficult to invent anything in the U.S. as the density of the IP minefield soars out of control.
But (counter to the beliefs of U.S. politicians), the U.S. isn't the only technologically adept country in the world, and while many other countries are following suit (most of Europe, for instance), not all of them are. I don't know, but perhaps Brazil might provide some competition in ideaspace. China could also, though it has other problems that currently yield the same basic stagnation that we will (more likely than not) see in the U.S. over time.
But the point is this: if the U.S. continues on this course, one of two things will happen: either the U.S. will get its ass kicked in the global marketplace as people in other countries invent things that can't be invented in the U.S. because nobody will bother to try, or technological improvement will grind to a halt worldwide.
Unless the latter happens, people in the rest of the world will be able to enjoy the benefits of non-U.S. developments while people in the U.S. will not, since U.S. patents govern commerce in the U.S. only, not elsewhere.
As an example that's relevant to this discussion, people in countries outside the U.S. will be able to purchase and use systems that make use of DDRSDRAM for cheap, because they won't be forced to pay the patent tax that people in the U.S. will have to pay: that tax will obviously be placed on goods in the U.S. in such a way as to make RDRAM more "economical" in the marketplace, and the end result is that people in the U.S. will be stuck using inferior equipment. Which will make businesses in the U.S. less competitive in the global marketplace. Certainly U.S. suppliers of computer equipment will be at a significant disadvantage in the non-U.S. marketplace relative to their foreign counterparts.
I want to see the companies in the U.S. get hurt where it counts, in the pocketbook, as a direct result of their own selfish greed and stupidity. But unfortunately, it's more likely that technological development worldwide will grind to a halt as the rest of the world follows the U.S. down the hole to hell.
Interestingly enough, it may be corporate stupidity, and not physics, which revokes Moore's Law....
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The industry should pay close attention to Patents RAMBUS is currently applying for, to avoid the same hassles for future memory/bus technologies. Since the Patent Offices appear to be incompetent the industry should fight those Patents before they are granted. Had the memory-industry kept an eye on patents relating to memory technology and fought them when there still was time, the whole thing might have cost them much less. I see no reason to let RAMBUS lay claim to technologies crucial to future technologies if it can be avoided.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Rambus sues AMD
Intel just stopped being investigated by FTC
Intel is a large investor in Rambus
Coincidence, or not?
Isn't it deeply ironic that any number of industry and political folk are spewing on about how "harming Microsoft will destroy the economy!", while at the same time Rambus gets to beat the shit out of everyone involved in building some of the core hardware components?
Ya wanna see harm to the industry, see what happens when some asshole causes prices to double because they control key technology.
Oh... waittasec. With the exception of Micron, Rambus is hurting Asian companies. No wonder it's okay with the politicians.
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"Rambus' legal department" ??
Isn't that redundant?
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Put your name against software patents
That petition is needlessly limited. Patents are harmful to every industry and every product they touch, be it software, hardware, pharmaceuticals, or anything else. The harmful impact of software patents are most obvious to us because we are familiar with the industry, and can remember a time when they either didn't exist at all, or had a smaller impact.
Patents harm every other area of intellectual endeavor just as badly, but we tend to see it less redilly in no small part because it affects us less directly, and because no one remembers a time when new knowledge about, say, a hydrogen fuel cell, could emerge into the market immediately and spawn a whole new series of quick inventions. Why? Because for the last 200 years in this country (and longer elsewhere) this hasn't been the case -- we've had generations to get used to the slowdown of technological progress the patent system inflicts upon us. Indeed, most of us never question the slow pace of progress with respect to automobiles, airplanes, or power generation -- we've lived with artifically restrained technological progress all our lives. It is only the threat to the one area, software, which had been free to progress and evolve at as fast a pace as new, unfettered ideas would allow, that the harm becomes obvious. We have a unique opportunity to wake up, question, and perhaps even change the entire paradigm. If we don't, how much time do you think will pass before people become used to the slow change in computer software, as new ideas (many obvious, some not) get locked up for twenty years at a time (then renamed, and locked up again).
The patent office doesn't need to be reformed or revamped. It needs to be shut down. Period.
Perhaps, if and when people start pondering and waking up to the destructive impact so-called intellectual property laws have, then maybe, just maybe, something will be done about it.
Of course, a constitutional amendment banning patents and copyrights isn't something we can hope for any time soon, more's the pity.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Their current licensing agreement most likely only covers Rambus's RDRAM memory, not the SDRAM and DDR SDRAM that Rambus now claims fall under its patents.