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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.
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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?
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
It's worse than that. A lot of this technology was first developed by a JEDEC working group (of which Rambus was a member) in the late 80's and early 90's. Part of the membership contract stated that members would not attempt to patent or otherwise seek protection for technology that the group developed.
Rambus, being the highly ethical people that they are, quietly filed for patents on the technology as it was developed; when this was discovered, they resigned from the working group. However, they still pursued (and were eventually granted) the patents.
It's just one of many signs of how diseased things have gotten that a company can get patents in direct violation of contracts they signed, patent technology that in some cases had already existed for at least a decade, and all the 'authorities' involved basically say "that's okay, if they're clever enough to get them they can keep them and use them to rape everyone they touch; it's just good business".
I've also seen people who say that even though it's very plain that most of their patents are bad, they should be allowed to keep them because their investors would lose money otherwise. How's that for reasoning? My take is that they deserve to lose their money for investing in a company run by a bunch of crooks.
Oh, and since Rambus obviously has an overactive legal department, all of the above is my opinion; it should not be construed as fact without independent verification (do a few searches around the 'net; it shouldn't be hard to find ;).
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.
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
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' legal department" ??
Isn't that redundant?
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