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Rambus Slammed For 'Judge Shopping'
Lawrence Person writes: "Acoording to this story on Semiconductor Business News, International Trade Comission Judge Administrative Law Judge Sidney Harris reprimanded Rambus for "blatant judge shopping" in response to Rambus withdrawing its suit against Hyundai after Harris, known as a tough judge, was assigned to the case. Harris also ruled "that if Rambus in the future ever filed a new synchronous patent infringement case against Hyundai, or even any other firm, such a petition must be assigned to his court if he is able to hear it.""
RAMBUS would be better off doing some engineer-shopping to develop a truely competetive product to DDR-SDRAM.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
This rule has been violated by Microsoft, Napster, and now Rambus. In Microsoft's case, it was doing such things as creating a video that was later conceded to be a stitched-together fake. In Napster's case, it was the remarkably two-faced performance of its executives on copyrights, and also the company's lack of a plan for making money ("What kind of a business is this?", one can imagine Ms. Patel saying). And now it's Rambus's turn to displease a judge by backing out exactly when one was assigned to its case.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The patent is still bogus (though I'm sure you probably already knew that). ASIC designers have been using both edges of a clock for quite a loooonnnng time. Is Rambus now going to sue ASIC houses as well? Why is using posedge and negedge clocks in SDRAM any more trivial than using them in an ASIC? I certainly don't know of any patents filed for ASICs using both clocks. Or microprocessors for that matter. Or PALs, or FPGAs, or organgutans, or breakfast cereals, or lima bean...
It's just a ridiculous patent (shock - a stupid patent passed by the USPTO!) from a ridiculous company.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Rambus claims to hold a patent over all SDRAM and DDR SDRAM chips produced. Anywhere. Rambus's goal is to force companies to pay fees to Rambus in order raise the cost of all non-Rambus memory. Rambus is just too weak to compete on the open market. Hyundai is one of the SDRAM producers that haven't caved in. Micron is another. Some others have caved though.
But it is clearly the "will of the people" that Rambus suceed, for it has been decided that Rambus is better and faster, so no doubt it would win the "popular vote", so I don't understand why this judge wouldn't allow Rambus to trample any opposition. I mean, come on, the people want Rambus, don't they?
Information is the catalyst for revolution
Really now... would you buy the first judge you looked at? Clearly, it's wise to shop around a little bit first. Compare prices. Contrast features. Make sure the judge you buy is a value.
A corporation cannot claim 5th amendment - AFAIK constitutional rights in the US extend only to humans - corporations can have arbitrary laws forced on them. :)
How many Rambust stocks do you own?
In any case, they _were_ allowed to drop the case. So your first statement is moot.
What they're _not_ allowed to do is to keep refiling over and over again until they get a judge they like. They're free to refile... they're just going to end up with the same judge.
If they actually weren't judge-shopping, then none of this is even an issue for them.
Could someone explain how could a judge have this kind of authority?
Hadn't you heard that judges have more power than God? It's true.
More seriously, a judge with a valid reason to suspect a pattern of frivolous litigation and forum shopping is within his rights to demand that all further similar cases from the same litigant be taken to his court.
This is not a common remedy, but it is not unheard of either. It is especially likely when a litigant shows a pattern of such conduct, and is meant to defeat the tactic.
An instance I can think of is that the famously irascible Judge Manuel Real of the Central District Court of California (most famous for ordering Larry Flynt chucked in a psychiatric prison for spitting at him and showering him with obscenities) once ordered the crime cult of Scientology to bring all cases in the District to his court and no other. He also had a Scientology cult attorney chucked in prison that same day for contempt.