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RAMBUS Taking SDRAM Patent To Court
fdiskne1 wrote to us with the news from C|Net concerning out litigious 'lil buddy RAMBUS [?] who's got the SDRAM patent in Court right now. Because, hey, if what you are making sucks, why not go out and sue everything that moves? Excuse my editorial feeling on this, but it seems like everytime I see Rambus in the news, it's not for a new technology, it's because they are suing someone. Erg. Now I'm cranky. Time for more coffee. Anyway, the article is the pretrial highlights of the Micron/Hitachi vs. Rambus suit. Interestingly, although Rambus is supposed to win, if they lose, they lose all the royality money. And if you read the article, there's some more trouble brewing for Rambus.
Their original, and intended use --- to allow the original inventor to recover the costs of development (without patents, competitors can copy at low cost, leaving the originator of a design at a disadvantage).
John
John_Chalisque
> Kind of like CISCO with their patent on NAT
Cisco's had to deal with some pretty nasty patents being lodged against it; as far as I've seen, they've not gone out and actively used so-called "nuclear" patents(for their MAD capacity) as a method of extortion.
I don't expect them to start.
--Dan
I has become a business to sue.
Mny companies' only goal is to patent "technologies" and ideas. Since you are not required to show a working prototype for patent applications, this can get easy. You then wait for the sucker who'll actually implement the thing and sue them.
Obviously, the key is to patent you stuff using the vaguest-possible to make it hard to find a pertinent patent when you apply for one yourself (like a bait).
Although this may not be the case for RAMBUS (aka, patent-baiting), they do want to take advantage of legal actions, since this can bring them money, since royalties were not coming in anyways.
"Business as usual" they say.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
The link above actually maps to
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http://www.tomshardware.com%2frambus%2fcomparis
The goatsex / shockpic thing is nasty and hateful, but I have to admire the misplaced zeal in finding new ways to herd unwilling and horrified traffic in front of things they didn't want their brain troubled with this lifetime.
Now why don't you use your powers for good?
I personally think what Rambus is trying to do is run what amounts to an extortion scheme using the patent laws as a shield.
Unfortunately for them, the case I mentioned earlier invalidated that idea, and Rambus will find out very quickly this is NOT going to work. In fact, the DoJ may even go after Rambus for violating the Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Federal statutes for putting pressure on other memory manufacturers so brazenly.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Brian,
What United Shoe Machinery Company did during the first half of the 20th Century was because they held several critical patents on shoe-making machines, they used those patents to forcefully kill all the competition in against them.
The US DoJ got wind of this, and they went after United Shoe. That resulted in the famous 1945 decision that ruled United Shoe could not use the patent laws to eliminate competitors.
Imagine if Eli Lilly had forcefully enforced their patent on Prozac like United Shoe did; it would have effectively killed off competitive anti-depressants like Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Remeron, etc.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Then, it's time to invent memory that doesn't need RAMBUS's idiotic patents isn't it? Sadly, it appears the product cycle for this kind of thing is terribly long. I have half a mind to boycott PCs entirely until these patents expire so I won't be giving RAMBUS any of my money.
I actually would really hope that Micron and Hyundai would completely detroy their companies rather than give RAMBUS a cent. I would rather pay any amount of money for RAM that was not encumbered with stupid RAMBUS licensing fees. Their business model is evil and wrong and must be fought.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
As someone else pointed out, our wonderful USPTO keeps patent applications secret until they're granted. It's pretty easy to tie up the approval process until it's convenient to have your patent granted.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Suppose some other race came and landed here and started demanding royalties for all these technologies that they had invented previously that they owned patents to? Suppose they had had an agent infiltrate and file patents on the techologies 5 years ago with the USPTO.
Would this be fair or correct? Would you be happy paying them royalties? Aren't those ideas really their property? Aren't we violating their property rights and stealing from them? Isn't it just the same as invading their planet and taking land by force of arms? After all, those technologies were patented fair & square.
Patents are a way of encouraging a certain kind of involvement within a community. The source of our upset with the aliens would be the fact that they circumvented many of the implied contracts with society inherent in the vision of how patent law is supposed to work. I think this example is very analogous to RAMBUS's behavior, and that our upset is quite understandable.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
think back to the days when 3dfx was at the apex of its business.
they chose to worry more about some guy building a glide->direct3d wrapper (and thus harassed & attempted litigation) rather than focusing their efforts on innovating their product line and building in more VALUE that would entice customers to purchase. in the process, they alienated a large percentage of their "enthusiast" customer base.
sadly, another competitor in the video card business is gone because they were too focused on the tactical here-and-now instead of worrying about what *really* needed their attention.
imho, the same thing will happen (again. the first round was in the early 90's if i remember correcly) in the memory business, it'll just take a good deal more time because product release cycles are quite a bit longer.
litigation is a procedural necessity when you've got aggressive third parties taking bites out of your company (especially if actually done fraudulently, not imho the case with rambus), but if you can't back up that litigation with further innovation, clearly, you're in for serious trouble.
Peter
It's like this: You come up with a great idea and start selling it. I see your idea, copy it, and begin selling it myself. Legally, I now owe you royalties. The catch is that you CANNOT ask for so much that I'm priced out of the market, or that your price gains an unfair advantage. The goal of royalties is merely to make sure that you're compensated for the business I take away from you, not to put me out of business. A patent is like a purse to collect money from eveyone who uses your idea. It is NOT a hatchet to kill them with.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Well, no one can accuse Rambus of trying to shut out competitors. After all, they don't actually make anything. Their whole game is to get somebody else to actually take all the risk and make the investment needed to actually manufacture memory. They just sit back, skim the cream off and get fat.
In theory, at some point, RAMBUS did actually at least have some technical people working for them. After all, lawyers don't write memory patents by themselves. However, it wouldn't suprise me if by now RAMBUS has fired all the engineer's and is now 100% lawyers.
Rambus says your claim is wrong. You say that they "provdied key technology". Bullshit.
/quote ---
---- quote from the C|Net article ----
What did it do while a member of JEDEC? Nothing. Rambus didn't try to persuade JEDEC memory committees to vote on proposals that would affect its patents and didn't vote on any, Rambus has mantained. Some companies had also already licensed Rambus' technology.
"We attended meetings, but we never proposed a standard," said Kanadjian. "We've been very
consistent that lot of inventions we have brought to the market pre-date any issues brought up
at JEDEC."
---
In fact, Rambus's whole defense to the FTC probe is that they never pushed or recommended their technology to JEDEC members, making their non-disclosure a non-issue (although still a violation of the rules). If your claim is true, then it just makes Rambus's violation of JEDEC rules all the more egregious.
Besides, if this were just about RAMBUS' own technology, that would be a little different; but their broader claims against the industry go to far, and I don't think should be allowed to stand:
Those patents were granted to them, wether they deserve them or not. There's nothing wrong with them trying to enforce them fully.
I disagree. Patents are an incredibly wooly area, and companies like RAMBUS push their claims beyond the bounds of sanity. It's up to a company how it chooses to handle its patents, and many companies seem to be capable of behaving quite responsibly. Usually, the ones that don't behave responsibly are those that are failing in other areas (e.g. Unisys, Amazon), or those like RAMBUS which have no other value whatsoever.
I don't even think that these companies serve their investors well, except in the short term. Long term, they're toast, because everyone else is going to find a way around them.
It's simple: RAMBUS doesn't make anything, but they make life difficult for a lot of companies that do make useful things. The very existence of RAMBUS is the consequence of the particular set of rather arbitrary intellectual "property" laws we have now. RAMBUS need to be taken down hard, and my bet is it's going to happen, sooner or later.
It is 20 years from date of filing. (Simply, there are other conditions.....)
Older patents expired 17 years from date of issue. I don't remember when things changed....
Look here.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
I'll have to agree. The only problem I see with the initial post is that it was way to long (copied from a news posting perhaps?) and it had a slightly inflammatory catchline at the end. The fact that the guy stated plainly at the beginning that he was a Rambus investor and the clear marking of his conclusion as OPINION.
This moderation was extremely unfair.
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
TIA
Flower
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Rambus provided nothing. The technology was independently developed without the use of Rambus technology.
That Rambus managed to con the USPTO into granting patents on (obviously) obvious technology that anyone in the industry could, and did, develop is hardly surprising. The USPTO grants such patents every day.
ZDNET
Best Slashdot Co
Actually, the whole point of this mess is that RAMBUS kept their patent application secret, so that nobody would know it, and raise hell at that comittee. As applications take quite some time to process, it was only granted (and thus made public), long after the deed was done.
> now that the sh## is hitting the fan the roaches crawl out the woodwork to cry "gimme gimme gimme
You know, companies do not have a god given right to profit. They cannot just patent the atmosphere and then whine about the "gimme gimme gimme roaches" that want to breathe for free.
I own some. It seems to work ok, but runs hot and is very expensive compared to SDRAM. Not to mention it's incompatible with non-RDRAM machines, and therefore confined to being usable on only the one machine (of many) that has it. We use HP equipment at my company, and all the other machines appear to be SDRAM. THis is nice, because we can move memory from machine to machine without compatibility problems. The RDRAM machine will just have to be hooked to a chain and thrown into the river after stripping it of useful parts once it goes dead. Not to mention that my SDRAM machines are more upgradable -- more than 2 slots and higher-capacity DIMMS than RIMMs. Pricewatch rocks.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
>
>Okay. You say 'many'. Name ten companies for which this is the case.
I can't name ten. But I can name one. RMBS.
Even Intel themselves are distancing themselves from RAMBUS - they wanted a technology company, not a bunch of lawyers.
Sadly (for INTC, RMBS, and the rest of the computing world), RDRAM is a dog that just won't bark. RMBS is doing what it feels it has to in order to survive - sue the fsck out of everyone in sight because it has no source of revenue other than the royalties it can extort with its legions of landsharks.
Sadly for RMBS (and wonderfully for the rest of us), DRAM pricing has dropped to the point where DDR SDRAM can be sold at about the same price as regular SDRAM. The recent production increase of RDRAM from Toshiba is a last-ditch attempt for high-cost [R|S]DRAM producers to break even. But RMBS is one legal decision away from oblivion.
Anyone got a source for a quote I seem to recall (but can't find) about an Intel guy saying something to the effect "we wanted a technology company, not an IP company"?
Ethics are not based on your behavior when there are consequences. Ethics are what you do when you believe there AREN'T any consequences - when you believe there is gain involved. If you are ethical, you will do what you believe in, even when you think you're the only one watching.
However, there are ALWAYS consequences - whether it is loss of the technically conscious market share, bad karma, lost sleep, or simply people spitting in your face when you go to conferences. Even if they win in court (which they shouldn't), they will lose in the market, and someone (hopefully more ethical) will buy up their empty shell of a company.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
I actually don't see anything wrong with the business plan. What's wrong with spending your time coming up with new ideas and then selling them to other corporations? When individuals do this we call them inventors. Why is it necessarily evil when a corporation hires a bunch of inventors to do the same thing?
Note that I'm not defending Rambus. They seem to actually be pretty sleazy and deceptive, but it doesn't seem that there is anything inherently wrong with patenting new ideas for RAM and asking those who produce RAM to pay your for the use of those ideas.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
The new ads are the most obnoxious, annoying advertising experiment I've yet seen.
I don't care if it is an interesting article, I'm not giving them the hits.
No, they wouldn't have tried the same thing. Rambus happened to be the only member of JEDEC that *didn't* physically produce any product. Since this debacle, the JEDEC has changed their rules to include only companies that physically produce DRAM.
The only reason rambus is getting away with this is because they pulled out of the JEDEC conference mid-way when they realized that Dell Computer tried to do the same thing as them but were found in contempt of JEDEC rules and had their patents nullified.
In my neck of the woods, 128MB PC133 SDRAM is $50-60 US. I suggest you buy as much as you can before this trial concludes, as if Rambus wins, memory prices are going up, and fast. Memory has been so cheap lately due to free market, if Rambus takes that away, then we're all screwed.
Don't mess with me... I write code
One key difference. 3dfx was a hardware manufacturer that made worthwhile products. They lost when other manufacturers surpassed them. OTOH, Rambus is a pile of patents that does not manufacture ANYTHING.
The patents cover fundamental principles of memory cell access, not just one specific implementation. It's up there with patenting the hyperlink. If they don't get overturned, every computer buyer in the world has to pay Rambus for the next several years. How's that for a business model?
What are the chances of other countries getting so sick of USPTO stuff ups that they no longer honour US patents? This would be a very big step, involving cancelling treaties, so I expect it isn't very likely. What are the chances of other countries threatening to do so, if the USPTO doesn't get its act together?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
But I agree about the having-and-not-using part sucking.
God does not play dice with the universe. Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
For someone so insistent on the "facts", you've made up quite a fairy tale. Assuming you didn't intend this as mindless flamebait, allow me to mention a few things:
1) Several years ago, when the major players of JEDEC got together and finalised the SDRAM standard, and later the DDR SDRAM standard, Rambus provided key technology to make those standards possible. Rambus's whole stance is that they didn't drive the standard formation, and didn't bring their technology to the committee-- otherwise, according to the JEDEC agreement, they couldn't patent it.
2) I know how much you slashdoters hate Big Corporations. On the one hand, Rambus. On the other, Micron and Hyundai. Which side do you think is bigger?
3) I certainly hope our court system will do The Right Thing and smack Micron and Hundai with some major penalties to make up for their theft and corporate espionage. In fact,the only people alleging espionage are Micron and Hyundai. Rambus isn't alleging any theft-- they're simply saying SDRAM infringes on their patents. Micron and Hyundai, by comparison, allege that Rambus not only failed to disclose their patents, but attempted to steer the standards committee's discussion towards infringing their patents.
Corporations are focused purely on making the most money for their shareholders and keeping the share price up. The customers come a poor second to this with employees a very distant third.
For one thing, it would have been difficult for the committee to come up with an alternative, making royalties inevitable.
"It would have been difficult not to use" the patents, said Peter Glaskowsky, an analyst at MicroDesign Resources. One of the patents controls how the processor gets a memory address, or the location of the data in memory. Rambus' technique is relatively straightforward and efficient, he said. End Quote. So Rambus is claiming: the JEDEC would pretty much have had to use their pantets, as it is the only way to do it. This is a justification for their behaior not being so bad. Is the only way to do something in any way realted to the things obviousness? As in, if a group of proffeisionals gets together, and decide to do something a particular way, and it is really the only way to do something, doesnt that mean that that is obvious?Second, however, is a question: how can any of us really judge the technical merits of Rambus RAM without owning it? Sure, there's the benchmarks, but relying on others is never a way to get accurate information (particularly in this crowd, that likes to do things on their own).
I understand the legality bs, but it would be nice to get some honest to goodness testimonials about Rambus RAM from actual owners.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I'm not a JEDEC member, I've never read their terms of membership, or anything of the like. In fact, I have no connection to the PC hardware manufacturing industry whatsoever. BUT, I would strongly suspect that membership in JEDEC would be contingent on revealing all IP patents regarding to pending technology standards .... it might not, but it would seem like it was in their best interests to have a clause like that.
I'm also highly suspect of RAMBUS' business techniques. Its one thing to disclose patents at the time of design. Its entirely another to wait for them to get widespread adoption (ala Compuserve with LZW/GIF) and THEN announce that you indeed have a patent on this, and that you will, in fact, be charging money for it. Highly dodgy, and see if RAMBUS are consulted on the next round of JEDEC.
It may well be that RAMBUS has one this round. Personally, I hope they havent, but they do own the patents. I cant see the company having a future in the memory industry though. NG Memory design committees will almost certainly not consult RAMBUS other than to say "So have you patented any of THIS?" and make them sign to it.
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
I don't see why they wouldn't be held to such a standard, if they signed a legally binding agreement to disclose patents relating to standards technology when they joined. It seems like if they held out on purpose, it is their own fault.
Sheesh....
Sounds like somebody has money invested in or works for Rambus.
Surprised somebody didn't label this Flaimbait.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
that since Rambus in an intellectual property company, they have no products, only patents. If they lose this lawsuit (i.e., the patents they have are not upheld) they will go away. PC companies are eager to use DDR-SDRAM as opposed to Rambus RDRAM, and that eagerness will only increase if Rambus' patents that they are using to siphon money from RAM mfr's are struck down. The performance of RDRAM does not justify the increased price it commands.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Aren't corporations supposed to be more focused on doing business than suing?
Other companies, including Wang and Dell, have been found in violation of antitrust law for not disclosing patent applications, according to several sources and Hyundai legal papers. However, in many of these instances, the companies actively promoted their technology to some degree. By contrast, Rambus was relatively passive.
Either way you cut the cake Rambus does have the patents for it. Whether or not it chose to either negligently, or out of sheer stupidity the fact remains they have the patents. This sort of reminds me of the Swedish citizen who invented I think it was the mouse and never took a patent out on it out of feeling the need to not make it an issue. Well years later he went to do so and the general feeling towards him was "screw you!" Its a mad mad mad mad world we send packets through.
400 thousand visitors in February couldn't be wrong
"When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am buddha, nobody is upset at all"
by not disclosing the existence of its intellectual property at the time the memory standards were being formed, according to court papers filed by Hyundai.
Ask yourself, while knowing this is the immoral thing to do, do you think their competitors wouldn't have tried the same slight of hand maneveur. So at the time the standards were being formed can be misleading. Was it BEFORE, DURING, of AFTER, which is the specific here. During the 20th century... well during the 20th century a lot of things happened. Specifics could help here, and no I'm not trying to jump on any side here but there's always two sides to a story and both should be heard fully out before jumping the bandwagon and making assumptions. Actions like this have jeapordized many'a' cases many'a' times
"When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am buddha, nobody is upset at all"
The first case going to trial, according to the c|net article is in a German court. IANAL, but this case is important but not as important as the U.S. cases will be (Rambus' patents are from the U.S. and can only be totally invalidated in the U.S.). If Rambus looses in Germany the weight of their patents are dimished in the eyes of everyone else but they'd only not be enforcable in Germany. Rambus would still have the patents in the U.S. (and thanks to the WIPO, everywhere else in the world).
Now on to my rant...
There's no doubt in my mind (or should be in anyone's mind) that Rambus conspired to deceive the JEDEC and corner the memory market through illegal practices. Even if they did not propose the SDRAM standard, they were in attendance at the JEDEC meetings and knew damn well that the standards being proposed might be infringing on patents that they held. They knew that the standard set by the JEDEC would become the de-facto standard for memory in all computers and that all the memory makers worldwide would be producing SDRAM products. They set a trap for everyone else, led them right into that trap, and now are triggering that trap. Thank god that Micron and Hitachi are fighting Rambus' trap.
Ah, that felt better. Godspeed to Micron and Hitachi.
In order to gain a patent, you have to disclose your design. That's the whole point of patents - in return for legal protection of your intellectual property, you have to disclose details of how the design works and mankind (is supposed to) benefit from this disclosure of knowledge. The alternative to patents and disclosure is to keep your design secret but have no legal protection of your design.
The details of patents are not released while they are still pending. RAMBUS's patents were still pending during the JEDEC meetings, so the only way for JEDEC to know about them was for RAMBUS to disclose them which they didn't even though they were supposed to as part of the conditions for joining JEDEC.
So the lying snakes joined JEDEC and steered the entire hardware industry in the direction of using technology they were in the process of patenting so that the entire hardware industry would owe them royalty fees.
IMO, JEDEC are just as guilty as Rambus for creating this whole situation
Why? Because they aren't psychic and read RAMBUS's executives minds or because they didn't make all members undertake a lie detector test?
Grabel's Law
Second of all, the Patent applies to any use of the described technology, so the title of the patent and its overview do not tell you all the applications of the patent. In order to understand a patent you must understand all of the patent.
Thirdly, even if part of a patent is invalidated, the balance remains in force, so you must understand every part of a patent.
Say you are trying to invent something new on your own. Now imagine that you are charged with making sure that there is no patent you would be infriging upon. This means you are responsible for knowing and understanding every part of every patent ever issued. Even disregarding the fecundity of the patent office- this is impossible.
The purpose of the JEDEC was to avoid this problem. All parties agreed not to lay a patent minefield. RAMBUS broke the rules- they are trying to gain from the work of others- they should lose.
I don't see how the JEDEC (Joint Electronic Devices Engineering Council) members can claim that Rambus didn't disclose their patents on SDRAM at the time that the standard was being chosen.
From the article:
Although the original claim was filed in 1990, Rambus didn't receive its patents, and make them fully public, until after it left JEDEC. By then, SDRAM was already established as the next standard for memory.
So basically what you have is this: Rambus and a bunch of other memory manufacturers are sitting around at JEDEC, discussing what the next memory standard should be. Eventually, they decide that it should be SDRAM. All the while, RAMBUS is sitting there with the knowledge that they have pending (as in, not yet accepted, or public) patents on SDRAM, yet they say nothing to anyone else.
Whether this is illegal or not is what the courts are going to decide, but at the very least it's highly immoral. Think maybe RAMBUS might have had an agenda for pushing an SDRAM standard at the conference, knowing that they'd likely be granted a patent on it in the near future? Think this knowledge might have affected what the other companies thought of SDRAM?
Rambus knew that they had a more than a competitive edge when the standards were being drawn up.
If a politician(moreso a minister) does not disclose that they have a vested interest in a change in the legislation, then they get investigated.
Similar to insider trading.
What does the international standards organisation do to stop this. How does a standard come about with this happening?
Surely there should be measures to stop this, or at least enforce decisions afterwards, particulary in regards to violations like this.
Or is the formation of standards similar to the UN, strictly a paper tiger?
Rambus is one of the primary members of JEDEC, a coalition between major players in the semiconducter industry. Several years ago, when the major players of JEDEC got together and finalised the SDRAM standard, and later the DDR SDRAM standard, Rambus provided key technology to make those standards possible.
Hemos, you seem to think that Rambus stay's in business by charging frivolous lawsuits against other memory manufacturers. Fortunately, that is far from the truth. Rambus is an intellectual property corporation, meaning they devote their resources to inventing the technology that makes todays high speed memory possible, but they do not actually manufacturer memory. That is where liscensing fees come into play. Rambus liscenses their technology to other manufacturers who actually produce the DIMMs. Sadly, Micron and Hundai seem to think that it's okay for them to manufacture memory using stolen technology with out any legal repercussions. I certainly hope our court system will do The Right Thing and smack Micron and Hundai with some major penalties to make up for their theft and corporate espionage.
From the JEDEC manual:
NOTE -- All committee ballots shall contain the following patent statement:
"If you are aware of any patents involved in this ballot, check this box and notify the
committee, citing the patent numbers."
The problem here is that while it sat on the JEDEC, RAMBUS had applied for but had not yet been awarded the patent. Everyone agress that RAMBUS didn't try to influence the standard setting process. The article also suggests that the outcome would have been the same even if the patents had been in place earlier, since the patents are so hard to circumvent (that's what you're going for when you write a patent). So the argument is that they should have disclosed the fact (presumably, somehow, without giving any indication of the contents) of the patent application.
Any business might reasonably be reluctant to do that. Setting the specifics of the RAMBUS case aside, if you're a company with a patent application in progress, you don't want anyone to know what the patent is about, because you don't have any protection for your technology. After all, the patent might be rejected, and then secrecy is your only protection.
As I am about the billionth person to point out, the problem is in the USPTO. Patent examiners come from the lower ranks of engineering, and patent trial juries are hopelessly overmatched by the issues they are presented with. However, there must be some system in place which allows someone to invest money in research with some expectation of making back that money. Otherwise you have the kid's soccer game model of technology, one company innovates and is immediately swarmed by as everyone clusters around the ball, and the winner is often the one who has the most to spend on marketing because they didn't have to do any engineering.
I think Rambus could have tough going defending its patents because of one famous legal precedent: U.S. v. United Shoe Machinery Company (1945), which ruled that a company cannot use the patent laws to engage in legal practices to shut out competitors.
What Rambus is engaging in right now is almost a perfect reflection on what United Shoe tried to do to any shoemaking company that violated United Shoe's various patents on shoemaking machines in the first half of the 20th Century.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Hitachi et al claims that Rambus should have disclosed their IP while
they were members of the JEDEC.
Rambus says they never mentioned or promoted their IP.
Therefore, the other committee members designed a memory technology in a
clean room environment that just happened to infringe on *pending*
patents.
This suggests to me that Rambus patented an *obvious* solution to
computer memory, and those patents should be revoked.
What troubles me the most is the following from the article:
In the JEDEC, Rambus "engaged in an illegal scheme to secure worldwide domination of the market for semiconductor memory" by not disclosing the existence of its intellectual property at the time the memory standards were being formed, according to court papers filed by Hyundai.
In essence, Rambus knew it had a claim to intellectual property that was being discussed in a standards-setting body in which it was participating. Basically, they were laying a trap for all the other memory makers.
This would be a good case study for an graduate studies ethics class.
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