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Rambus Loses; Vows to Appeal
Fat Rat Bastard writes: "Fresh off of the C-NET new wire comes this news flash "A federal judge in Virginia on Friday threw out the three remaining patent infringement claims brought by memory chip designer Rambus in its case against European chipmaker Infineon." Rambus are vowing to appeal after the last three of 57 patent claims that survived the chop Tuesday were thrown out of court."
Simply put, the judge must believe the credibility of the witnesses. They may know all the high-tech terminology and there may well even be a valid case, but if the judge finds any inconsistencies, inaccuracies, lack of co-operation or disrespect for the court, he may disbelieve everything the witness may say. Once credibility is lost, it may never come back, at least for that judge.
Rambus appears to have done just about everything that it could to lose credibility. First there is the criticism by a judge that they were "judge shopping". Then there was the appearance that they had patents covering just about everything dating from the start of the computing era, if not it appeared that patents could be manufactured out of whole cloth on short notice. What other impression could be given by attending JEDEC where everybody laid out their proprietary technology on the table and then announcing, "oh, by the way, those are our patents". What incredible timing!!? Then there is the question about who worked for Rambus and when. Then there are all those funny press releases on Rambusite implying that Rambus would soon monopolize the entire DRAM market.
Think about one reason given for the direction of the DOJ/Microsoft decision, credibility again.
Rambus should go back to designing hardware and give up the politics and litigation. And, for goodness sake, they should stop trying to emulate "The Lying Guy" from old Saturday Night Live episodes. "Look at all those patents on the JEDEC table, I Wish a few of them were ours. Yeah, that's the ticket, we'll claim they are all ours!".
Is because AL GORE holds the patent on all RAM.
. . . Rambus has announced today that it owns all patent rights to the appeal process.
(Not an employee, related, yadda)
I also recently grabbed a couple sticks of 256mb DDR memory from Crucial. Good price, free shipping, and they're now happily running in an Athlon Tbird, FIC AD11. Nice stuff.
I heard that Rambus only opens their board of directors to racketeering charges if they appeal.
Does anybody have more information on this?
Don't forget that Crucial.Com sells Micron SDRAM and DDR RAM.
I do not work of Micron/Crucial but I have bought A LOT of RAM from them in the past 6 months.
I wonder what happens with the licensing agreements that Samsung and others signed with Rambus. Will they have to continue paying Samsung royalties, even though the patents have been invalidated?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Wow! Thailand has a King who can actually think for himself! (Whereas, we have a "president" who is about as smart as a box of rocks.)
Seriously, a working Palm-oil fuel patent is exactly the sort of thing that *ought* to be granted. Not all patents are bad. Just *most* of them!
Dog is my co-pilot.
Yes, offtopic. Deal with it. I've always preferred the service at Tran Micro, just down the street from General Nano. If they don't have something, they order it and have it the next day, if it's broken they don't give you a severe hassle to return it, and they're overall nice people (family business). Also, their prices are as good or better, and they carry Asus and Abit motherboards (which Nano claims don't work so they don't carry.) $0.02.
-30-
Both.
The exchanges regularly halt trading of issues shortly before big news items break regarding the issue. IBM always stops trading at about 3 PM on the says it announces earnings, as do many companies that announce earnings shortly after the market closes.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
These guys are down 90% from peak of $152. Keep facts staight.
Help fight continental drift.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature /may01/ram.html
Try this.
>model and diversified revenue stream. Putting
>your eggs in one basket doesn't create a
>catalyst, it creates a huge risk.
Coca-cola's been selling one product for a hundred years now.
As Mark Twain said, puting all your eggs in one basket and WATHING THAT BASKET is often a good idea. Beats spreading yourself too thin doing 15 things poorly.
Rambus's problem is that their original business idea (rambus memory) turned out to be a technical dud along the lines of itanium and pentium 4. (Great in theory, doesn't work so well in practice). So they turned to suing everybody in sight, which is NOT a core business.
Rob
I think the reason why Rambus' suit was thrown out is simple: US v. United Shoe Machinery Company (1941), the second-most famous anti-trust case after US v. Standard Oil Trust (1911).
In US v. United Shoe Machinery Company, it was ruled that a company could not use the patent laws of the USA as a means to keep out competitors; you have to remember at the time United Shoe had a fairly large portfolio of critical patents on various aspects of shoe-making machines, and United Shoe used them to effectively shut down all competition.
Rambus is using their patents on SDRAM to try to extort money from other companies, despite the fact that Rambus doesn't really make any product per se. This is a major no-no based on the case I cited.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
From the article:
"In our view, if Rambus loses the Infineon case, the stock loses its catalyst," Edelstone wrote in a research note earlier this week.
Does anyone else see way too many things wrong with this quote?
Stocks should be based on a company's business model and diversified revenue stream. Putting your eggs in one basket doesn't create a catalyst, it creates a huge risk. Few computer companies make their money in court, and not only because it is unethical to do so, but because it is also unreliable. Any student of history knows the massive temper tantrums the courts have had in the past century and how often they have affected everything big business.
Who wants to guess at the likelyhood that Mr. Edelstone has Rambus technology in the memory chips of the computer he used to type the research note? In essence, he and other investors are paying Rambus to charge them more for memory, and the money is going around and around in a circle, creating the illusion of profit. This is what bubbles are made of.
Yeah, but they dropped by 20% in one day, not one year. That's not what analysts usually mean when they say 'market outperform'.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Every Canadian knows Santa Claus lives in Canada!
As described in this official Canada Post news release, Santa's address is:
Santa Claus
North Pole HOH OHO
Canada
This has been a public service announcement.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
When I first saw this piece of news, I was very happy.
The reasons for this are obvious. Rambus' patents are bogus, were obtained fraudelently, and are being used as a tool to tax and stifle innovation, not contribute to it. This ongoing saga embodies the corruption and hypocrisy that permeates the current US patent system as it pertains to technology. So it's good to see a judge acknowledge an instance of abuse.
However, in hindsight, I begin to wonder: Did Rambus ever REALLY have a chance? Here's a single upstart company, with a few million in market cap (at first), trying to take on some of the biggest multinational technology companies in the world. Did they really think they would be able to win, armed with something as inconsequential as THE LAW? What if Rambus' patents were legitimate? Do you really think the outcome would be any different?
Why should we cheer on Micron, Infineon, and all the other corporations that have become targets of Rambus' litigious business model? Do we really think that, if they felt that they had a realistic chance of success, they wouldn't do the EXACT same thing that Rambus is doing now? Like any other corporation, none of the players in this game have any ethic higher than that of profit.
By all means, celebrate Rambus' defeat. For their unethical business practices, they deserve to burn. However, I view this case as nothing more than dueling firehoses of money. Rambus' firehose has less pressure to it, so they'll probably lose. Remember that Law is FOR SALE. If you can throw enough money at a good lawyer, a judge will overturn anything for you. Neat how that works.
When I see a legal victory in which principle and ethics triumph over money, when I see one of the many DeCSS defendents win their case, THEN I'll celebrate.
I'm not sure about Infineon (anyone with Neon in their name can't be all bad), but I've always used Micron/Crucial RAM, and am very happy with it.
I bought 4GB of RAM from Crucial, 2 Tyan Thunder 2500s, and ordered 4 PIII CuMines. I got the RAM and motherboards in normal time, but the CPUs ended up being back ordered for several months.
After I got the CPUs I found that the RAM that Crucial had listed on their site as being compatible with the board actually didn't work with the board. So I called Crucial about an exchange. Since so much time had passed the first person I talked to didn't know if they could do it. But after they talked to a manager, they said it would be no problem. I got the exchange, and since RAM prices had dropped in the mean time, they gave me some money back.
I have no problem recommended Micron/Crucial to anyone.
Sorry..I meant this to go to (A Wireless Revolution From The Garage)..
and the south will rise again!
Holding breath.
Even should RAMBust's claims to patents on SDRAM and DDR SDRAM (less likely given this case), at BEST their royalty gravy train would have not lasted any more than 3-5 years MAX.
I think that the patent would only be good till 2007, so there'd be an absolute max of 6 years. With the right licencing terms a manufacturer might be better off sucking it up for 6 years rather than go through the expense of switching technologies.
- bridgette
Been there, done that, got 256 megs of PC1600 DDR SDRAM from Crucial in my GHz Athlon box to prove it. :-) At $95, it was also the least expensive DDR SDRAM at the time...an added bonus. I think you can get PC2100 for the same (or maybe less) now, but I haven't checked lately.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I'm posting here to kill my moderation. I meant to click 'interesting' and it came back as 'flamebait'. :-(
Mandrake 7.2 and KDE 2 for me? for free?
1000 SlashDot sigs
I meant to mod as 'interesting' and it came back as 'flamebait'. I've already posted elsewhere in the discussion to kill my moderation. Sorry I didn't do it immediately. My bad! :-(
Mandrake 7.2 and KDE 2 for me? for free?
1000 SlashDot sigs
Agreed. Good idea with the stock at $18. Not necessarily a good idea with the stock now at $15.
(Remember, RMBS dropped to $15 from ~30ish on the first "big hints" that they were gonna lose the case - we can therefore assume that "RMBS Loses" means a stock price of around $15.)
The dismissal of 54 claims the other week was the other "big hint". The high probability of them losing the case had already been priced into the stock until yesterday, when RMBS ran up to $18 on the news of the 3.5% gouging on DDR contracts in an effort to squeeze DDR out of the market.
Only with the stock at $18 was put-buying "easy money", and had I done so, I'd probably have taken some money off the table as soon as the stock reopened for trading this afternoon.
And I still wouldn't have done it with more than about 2-3% of my portfolio. As you say, it takes macho huevos, and the RMBS game is a little too heavy for me to play anywhere but on paper.
> "If today's decision is allowed to stand, all companies that innovate risk having their intellectual property rights unjustly expropriated."
Ah, I love the smell of roasted landsharks in the morning. Smells like... victory.
You can always tell how desperate a company is by the number of times it uses the word "innovate".
My only regret is that I lacked the testicular fortitude to load up on RMBS puts this morning. Easy money.
"We don't understand, we figured out a way to get free money from everyone and they're not cooperating!" says Rambus offal.
On a lighter note, "At the time of the trading halt, the shares were trading at $15.50, down $2.65, or more than 14 percent, before the halt."
At the bottom of the page it says that Rambus stock is worth about 13.11$. What does 'trading halt' mean again?
Huh, that's odd, when I went back to check the article, it's no longer listing Rambus's stock price at the bottom.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I have always bought from crucial. There great! Their prices are a little higher than what you might buy from other places. But then again I am buing 256meg sdram buffered with ECC for my home server. Crucial also ships 2nd for free!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Most likely, the contract is that they'll pay per unit of product that uses technology covered by the patent. All they have to do now is claim that the RAM isn't covered by the patent, and if they want to go to court on that, attempt to use this as precedent.
-bugg
Throwing out a patent case must take some real guts in today's world. Just look at how insane patent law has become!
Say Hi to Cal for me ;-)
..the numbers are not in their favor. Let's just look at the cash situation:
Infineon: $325M
Rambus: $138M
How much cash can Rambus burn on attorney fees? Even without cash, Infineon has much more financial power. In the worst situation, Infineon can sell a building or two, but Rambus?
Whic sort of reflects the basis of the two companies: one is a huge, 26B mkt cap chip maker (with tons of IP created over the years) while Rambus is a one-trick company, that lasts until the SDRAM/DDR license users feel like submitting themselves to that single trick.
I wouldn't bet one dime on Rambus' chances, and therefore, I am happy I am not a RMBS shareholder. And note, I have not even touched the legal/ethical aspect of the trial.
Sigged!
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Infineon RAM has proved nicely robust for my AMD system and I'm quite pleased with it. I'd recommend their RAM to anyone right now.
512Megs of 133Mhz Infineon RAM.. at today's prices, you can get that for about 140$ in some places. Locally (here in Canada), this Infineon RAM is selling for 105$Cnd for a 256Meg stick.. so about 75$ US.. such a sweeeeeet deal..
malloc 30 bytes?... ah what the hell... gimme 4k, RAM is cheap and all my SUV(RAM guzzling) software is quite happy... I think I need to start a few more services.. I'm still not using enough RAM...
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
"But that process can't even begin until the case has been appealed and re-appealed and finally settled."
And by the time that gets through the courts all current memory technologies will likely be obsolete.
Maybe not living in the USA is a disadvantage for me, because I don't understand this talk about innovation and how it is getting crushed all the time.
Clipped from the page:
Now, on an innovation is something new. Does getting shown up to have a bogus lawsuit cause you to lose the ability to make something new? They are intentionally missing the point, utterly and completely. Rambus is twisting words. Same with that Microwhat? company.
Well, they obviously didn't want their company to become worthless in a matter of minutes. Rambus' entire business is centered around leveraging its IP (patents) and, because of this ruling, their ability to do that is severely damaged. I like this quote from the article:
"It seems unlikely Rambus (memory) will ever be a high-volume, mainstream memory technology," he said.
This pretty much says the future of Rambus' business. IANAL, but it looks like RDRAM is the only thing they've got now (they have a desidingly negative ruling against them) and even Intel, its strongest backer, is conceding that RDRAM will never become the high-speed memory standard; DDR SDRAM is the future.
Actually, it was a little worse than that - if I remember correctly, Rambus tinkered with the contents of their patents a little after attending the industry standards board, in order to make sure that the patent descriptions would cover the subjects brought up in the standards meeting.
One small step for patent law, one giant leap for Mankind!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
infineon is the ic fab of siemens. infineon ram is really good and very popular here in germany. anyway infineon sdram modules were almost the only ones with a correct programmed eeprom in the last c't test
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Rambus is more of a speculator in the hardware market than it is an actual producer of product. If you thought there wasn't anything worse than a business built on the dot-com hype, think again -- this is gambling that'll put vegas to shame. Add to that a whole bunch of eager day-traders and we've got ourselves gaming-addiction central!
Holding breath.
Who is the humorless dweeb who moderated the parent post down as off topic? The quality of moderation here is bad and getting worse.
And yes, this post is definitely off topic, so have your way with it.
No sig? Sigh...
Let's just think about this in terms of the legal system not being so far removed from what actual people say to one another. (A difficult notion, I know.) Let's pretend we're a primitive people with no courts and we resolve things via public dispute.
Mr. Rambus stands up on a soapbox and shouts something about Mr. Infineon. It is an accusation, a claim that Mr. Infineon has committed some grave offense. The common rabble is worried, and asks for evidence. They are dedicating their time and money to listen to Mr. Rambus shout, time and money they could be using to be productive themselves. But they take Mr. Rambus seriously, so they let him shout and ask for evidence.
Mr. Rambus is unable to come up with any evidence. Everyone involved reaches the conclusion that Mr. Rambus is full of it, and they go home. Now -- Mr. Rambus has lost face in front of a lot of people, but it is not difficult to imagine that if he had another legitimate complaint, people might listen to him. But if he started shouting a second time, demanding the time and attention of all the people involved, and still had nothing to go on -- well, eventually people would ignore him.
Now imagine that, instead of just shouting a second time, he shouted 56 more times. People had to drop what they were doing and dedicate time and energy to listen him go on and on about claims that, eventually, were found to be baseless. He would be thrown out of the community for wasting so much of everyone's time.
While we don't all congregate every time someone shouts something bad about someone else in real life, it's not that far from the truth. Every claim someone makes against someone else requires taxpayer dollars for our court system to review it. The judge's time is taken away from other things. And in this case, the case didn't even proceed -- Rambus and his shouting were thrown out of court. The societal equivalent to being told 'you, sir, are full of it. Get out of here and never return.' Once upon a time, this would be humbling. You would spend a lot of time making up to the community the resources you'd forced them to spend. You'd apologize to the parties involved. But Mr. Rambus is too proud to do that. He relies on his capitalist system without any kind of the temperence necessary to make capitalist work for someone else besides the capitalist. He is going to spend more time and more money, even after he was told by his peers (does anyone out there actually AGREE with Rambus?) and the law that he's wasting everyone's time.
O, how I long for the days when such people would be put in stocks in the public square....
They also have a decent FAQ covering issues like buffered/nonbuffered, registered/nonregistered, ecc/non-ecc, edo, etc. For ECC in particular, I believe that your system has to specifically be able to use it....
-- fencepost
fencepost
just a little off
I realize that this may seem obvious, be we need to reward Micron & Infineon by purchasing their RAM products. They spent tons of money fighting an unjust cause. The next time I purchase RAM, it will be for one of these two brands
Doh!
http://www.pinstruck.com/
-20% today, 20,000,000 volume... closed at $14.60 from a high near $120.
.com mania.
I have one thing to say, SCREW you people who supported such a company, you diserve to be burned. It's not a flame, it's a fact. When it was flying high, it was clear that rambus's buisness practices were questionnable, and one reason this stock rocketed among others was that people thought they would have cash from any kind of memory sold (so a big cash cow). Sorry but other people developped memory as well and other companies spent $$$ into R&D and RAMBUS cannot just steal that IP away. You supported that by investing? you burn!.
People who actually bought that thing over 30$, just a rule of thumb, if you're buying a stock with a P/E of over 30-50, either you've got inside scoop on what's gonna happen or you've done serious Due dilligence. FYI, at 15$, the P/E is around 23. at 100$ heh, it's crazy... it's like the
The technology itself isn't all bad and I'd like to see the alpha with 5-channel rambus, that would just SCREAM. But I surely won't support a company who base it's buisness model on screwing it's competitors with self-claimed technologies that they didn't produce themselves at 100%.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The offer must be accepted by the offeree
You've been hanging around business analysts too long.
Analyst 1: What shall we call that thing at the other end of the relationship?
Analyst 2: Hmm, just stick a couple of 'e's on the end, nobody will notice.
Who does a king rule over? Kingees, Who's in prison, gaolees, who supports Heart of Midlothian? Jamborees
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Heh, I was only mucking about, precisely because I'm sitting around business analysts at the moment adding two 'e's on to any noun going. I guess they do it because the added effort of trying to find the right word doesn't really add much value to the job they are doing, but it doesn't stop me taking the piss.
One day I may learn to take things seriously
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
If I recall, some of their financial relases indicated some really MASSIVE budgeting for legal expenses (and seem to recall warnings that if they didnt' prevail, their earnings projections might a little...uhhhh....off. I was glad to see the ruling. Rambus got greedy by trying to force rambus memory like a childish bully... saying they'd charge much larger royalties on ddr then sdram..something many said they didn't rightfully have in the first place. I find it interesting...esp. with rambus arrogant anouncement of their intentions upfront. It's a little like a slap suit...for money and nuisiance. Thankfully the likes of a Micron had their own little slap-back attitude. Hopefully they'll prevail. 2002 earnings should be interesting. If they don't win on appeal, there goes minimally sdram maybe ddr? royalties. Intel, whith whom they're no longer bedmates will be seilling a lot more pentium 4's by then... for motherboards that'll have chipsets supporting ddr at that point, and rambus memory will still be massively overpriced compared to ddr as who's going to buy it??. Hopefully the lawyers are billing regularly, or they'll have to hire their own lawyers to make sure they get paid....just a little very biased (thanks to rambus) opinion. I wouldn't want to be responsible for rambus share price ESPECIALLY if they've put their money into lawyers and not research (be interesting comparison to see what got more for 2001). Those class action lawyers for stockholders are probably salivating already.
More high-tech patent news
love is just extroverted narcissism
A related sidenote...looks like Linus Torvalds is in full agreement with this position regarding innovation, at least according to this.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Okay, so maybe you're from south of the Mason-Dixon, so maybe such a comment might offend you. So what? If you're on Slashdot you should be able to suck it up.
/. : is it reasonable to allow a patent on something that is, to all intents and purposes, a commodity? Seems to me that Rambus has been all over "embrace and extend" with this fight, and this could be the beginning of a smackdown on the whole concept (yeah, wishful thinking).
The curious thing about all this points to an interesting problem with patents that has nothing to do with the usual patent debates on
There was an analogy I heard made somewhere during the MS antitrust trial of taking property by eminent domain in the supposed case of a government takeover of a privately owned toll bridge. The idea was that an essential service controlled by a private entity is a Bad Thing; this is the logic behind the formation of the Federal Reserve, for example (so that the US Gov't wouldn't have to be dependent on the corporate whims of JP Morgan).
So what comes out of this is the possibility that maybe a patent should not be granted when it might create a proprietary form of a technology that was previously public domain/commodity. Now I haven't really thought through the implications of this, but it does seem to follow from the spirit of US patent law. Any thoughts?
/Brian
Actually, I rather think Thomas Penfield Jackson is just the kind of judge our federal courts need more of.
Go pick up a copy of the book Voodoo Science by Robert Park. There's a considerable amount on "free-energy" artists, especially a man named Joe Newman who claims to have invented a high-voltage electric motor that gets more energy out than goes in. The climax of the Joe Newman angle comes in front of the Senate when John Glenn suggests putting connecting the output of the device to the input to see if it does what Newman says it does, but what leads up to it is more interesting.
Newman was denied a patent for his machine thanks to the long-standing USPTO policy against allowing patents for perpetual motion devices. He sued in federal court, and the judge on the case was none other than Judge Jackson. Jackson appointed an expert to examine the case, but threw out the expert's conclusion in favor of Newman when he realized two things:
a) the report made no sense; there was no way that the results could be what was said and
b) the expert happened to have a conflict of interest in Newman's favor, being connected to a patent attorney that had been involved in Newman's original patent application.
Maybe Tom Jackson is incapable of not running his mouth at critical moments, but every indication is that he was precisely the individual needed to preside over the MS antitrust case. His track record is one of meticulous research on his cases, it would seem...
/Brian
Who wants a memory array that needs cooling almost as much as the CPU anyway?
I feel sorriest for Intel, though. They've been skirting the edge of fuckedcompany.com for over a year now because of their supply problems and brain-gimped management (sorry, there is no excuse whatsoever for a company in Intel's position to lose the amount of ground they had). They roped the P4 to Rambus and wound up getting screwed... Not good.
/Brian
No it is about the fact that RAMBUS is evil. They went into a standards body (JEDEC) listened turned around filed for patents on the stuff that was being talked about and turned around and started the lawsuits. They stole the tech on which the patents are based. This makes them evil.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
And might I say that it's nice to see the bad guy get it via lawyers' fees for a change, as opposed to genuinely innovative companies like Aureal.
So, what happens now with the spineless companies that backed down; they can't exactly turn around and take Rambus to court after signing a licensing agreement. The only way they could escape the license is if the patents were found to be invalid. Rambus (unfortunatly) is dead yet.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
BULL SHIT.
The civil war was about states that didn't want the federal government controlling their states internal affairs. The rampant increase of Federal powers we've seen since then only proves they were right.
Rambus CEO Geoff Tate said. "If today's decision is allowed to stand, all companies that innovate risk having their intellectual property rights unjustly expropriated."
innovate... that word is tossed around so much today that i'm not sure that anyone really remembers what it means. it's become a buzzword like synergy or crap like that.
all i want (and i'm not the only one) is for people to stand up and demand somthing real from big business! not lawsuits and bickering and this and that. give us somthing we can use! microsoft blathers on about innovation but we've already discussed that. now RAMBUS goes on crying about having its innovation taken away! it's underhanded, it's sneaky and it's not doing a damned thing for the customer! innovation gives something back! it doesn't take and take and take so that someone's stock can go up so they can buy another million dollar house while their customers are screwed!
maybe i'm just pissed off and am not making any sense, but this is insane.
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
there is a such thing as "frivolous lawsuits"... the courts outta tell them ... "Get off it, go make your overpriced junk (RDRAM that is) better so you can sell more and stop taking advantage of everyone else!"
The Rambus model of Success(?): 10% Inspiration, 90% Litigation
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Buffered, non-buffered?
Ecc, non-ecc?
I don't know how these translate into performance and reliability. I'd like to get the PC2100, in 256M pcs.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What remains is Infineon's RICO charges, and contention that the patents are invalid. All that was decided was that Infineon didn't infringe, or the infringement was less than intentional.
Still up: Hynix (Hyundai) and Micron. Micron should be very interesting.
The vow to appeal is obligatory, in the the dismissed charges, as as it stands, Rambus' position is weakened. A great place to track, day to day is RMBS on Yahoo
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's how corrupt and contemptuous they are.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
With all of the bored landsharks^W lawyers, watch Infineon start suing for royalties. :)
/*drunk.. fix later*/
IANAL, but I do know the basics of a contract. It has to have three basic elements to be valid.
1.)OFFER- In an offer there is a promise by a party to do something or not to do something. This must be something that persons are not already legally bound to do or not to do.
2.)ACCEPTANCE- The offer must be accepted by the offeree, at which point an agreement and thus a contract is formed.
3.)Consideration- The legal detriment bargained and promised for in exchange for legal benefit, by both parties, either orally or in writing, as required by the statute of frauds.
Now granted, there is allot more to contracts than the basic laymans explanation I give above. The best anyone in my state of ignorance regarding contract laws or Rambus's contracts in particular could manage under the circumstances is to make a wild 50/50 guess as to how the courts would intrepret them and whether the courts would decide they were valid and enforceable or invalid and void.
This is the kind of thing that makes speculating and investing allot like gambling. Knowledge of how this is all going to wash out in court is almost like knowing a winning lottery ticket number in advance. Either that or it could save a savvy investor the loss of a fortune. Too bad I'm not investor class, but hey, at least if Rambus loses I have a cheap and competetive supply of memory producers from which to choose for my next memory purchase;o)
And noJudge Shopping either!
AC comments get piped to
Companies innovate new technologies all the time, and profit from them. It's the "innovate while sitting on a industry standards board, keeping quiet about what you've done but help lead the consensus toward your unannounced innovation, drop out of the board and try to make them all pay for your patent" that companies will have a hard time doing in the future. And rightly so.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
"I guess there's just not much of a future in IP litigation any more. Folks, we're just going to have to start designing quality products and selling them in an honorable fashion if we want to survive."
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
This is a great thing!
;)
Now Rambus is going to have to *gasp* actually make a product instead of just go after other companies.
Of course, imagine how the other memory companies are looking right now, now that Infineon is royalty-free for the time being. One wonders if other companies are going to now announce that they are going to discontinue sending rambus royalty checks.
Gentoo Sucks
From http://www.ebnews.com/story/OEG20010504S0059
"Beyond that, the continuing trial in Richmond will draw even greater interest as the jury will decide whether Rambus engaged in alleged restraint of trade and fraud by keeping its synchronous patent applications hidden while a member of the industry JEDEC panel drafting an open SDRAM standard.
Infineon this week started calling witnesses to testify on Rambus conduct at JEDEC. Attorneys for the German firm have also disclosed handwritten notes by Rambus patent attorneys describing what was alleged to be urgent pleas from Rambus officials to amend the applications in 1998 and 1999 to cover JEDEC features. "
In other words, IT AINT OVER YET!!!!
The patents may still be ruled invalid (looking likely) and some RAMBust exec might see the inside of a "Federal pound me in the ass prison" as well he/she/it deserves for their conduct...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
RMBS shares should be trading at a discount now.
They have been for quite a while now. They'd be trading even lower if they hadn't stopped trading on it before the decision was announced. But even at 10% of their previous price, it's hardly a bargain if the company proves to have an unsustainable business model (or its only revenue generating product tanks a la RDRAM). I can't possibly imagine why so many people have been so bullish on it's stock for so long to begin with (unless it was dot-com induced euphoric mania).
Intellectual property laws are the vestiges of a sick and dying system. They infringe on individual liberty and set human beings against one another. The only law that should exist regarding original creation is a law against plagiarism. But then again, such a law would amount to "don't lie" and does not even need to be a law in its own right. Maybe there should only one law in the world: Do the right thing.
Demand liberty! Always.
The other patents are the foreign versions of the ones in the US suit. Having lost in the US the chance of wining elsewhere on the same patent claims is very small.
Rambus failled to get the case to trial. That is significant and places them in a very bad position for an appeal. Rambus can only appeal on a point of law. The district court is generally given defference to on matters of fact - unless as with Judge Penfold Jackass the judge insults the appeals court and labels 'conclusory statements' as 'findings of fact'.
The Micron and Hyundai cases are certain to fail if Infineon fails since they all concern the design of the same product.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Damn... markets are closed. Nice timing. ;)
I'm thinking that this just blew a largish hole in their revenue model. Time to go short on Rambus, perhaps? I was under the impression that revenue from patents were quite important to their buisness strategy.
RMBS shares should be trading at a discount now. If you consider that RDRAM has a better roadmap into the future than either SDRAM or DDR, RMBS still is a good investment.
Of course, you'd have to assume that Intel will remain true to its own roadmap to see Rambus's future clearly. That may be a bigger assumption now that the patents are somewhat freed up.
Dancin Santa
Santa Claus
101 13th Ave. Apt 100a
North Pole, NP 00001-100
I'm afraid that posting opinion about a stock and its future while possessing no financial interest in the stock is not illegal. Or would you rather rent a dogsled and come visit me?
Dancin Santa
I'm not the dogsled service. And I'm not sure I'll be needing your services as I just had a Toto Prominence with heated seat and bidet option. It handles my elimination quite nicely, thank you.
Dancin Santa
Interesting, could you elaborate more?
Dancin Santa
I'll go see the elves about your dogsled. I can't promise anything about the condition, though. You don't seem to have been very nice this year.
You don't think the super-gravity flushing mechanism is sufficient for my needs? Maybe I need to cut back on those gingerbread men...
Dancin Santa
Freude, Scho"ner Go"tterfunken
Tochter aus Elysium
Wir betreten feuer-trunken
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum
Lets get serious here. How much did it cost for a stick of RDRAM? What was it $400, $500, $600,...? And the benchmarks when compared to DDRAM was only "marginally" faster - sometimes. And how much more was DDRAM than SDRAM? What 10%, 15%? The only real backer RAMBUS has is Intel and they've even started making their mobos compatible for DDRAM. I know quit a few college Master degree candidates in comp sci and comp engineering that think RDRAM is a joke. I know a few system designers that think the same thing. I never had the slightest inclination in purchasing RDRAM and don't know anyone else who wanted to either. They were just desperate to lock up some market share and ran out of ideas. So, of course, the legal department can up with the sure fire solution - WE'LL SUE!!! Opps, how much did the stock price fall today - something like $19, or was it 19%... what ever. It was falling so fast they had to halt trading on it. Ya, they'll make a profit for sure!
Rambus CEO Geoff Tate said. "If today's decision is allowed to stand, all companies that innovate risk having their intellectual property rights unjustly expropriated."
Huh? Since when did the lead singer for Queensryche become the CEO of Rambus?!
They have but the majority of companies caved and paid Rambus the royalties they demanded. Only Infineon and Mircon refused to roll over and play dead. In fact Micron has launched a separate law suit against Rambus for violating JEDEC bylaws. The Micron case is still pending but this judgment bodes well for Micron.
The issue is not so much whether Rambus is a good or bad company either morally nor technically. The issue is whether the patents they own actually cover the technologies in rival products. If they do, then they are welcome to the royalties.
What concerns me is the process for determining the patent's applicability. What is the test to determine whether the patents Rambus have cover technology in DDR and others? By virtue of the fact that Rambus took it to court, there must be some form of grey area.
Where does the process stop? Can Rambus win in Germany, and lose in US? Can there be stupid results like that?
.. if only.
Damn right they're going to appeal, I sure as hell would if it meant a quick payoff of ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
Now whether they are right or not is another matter...
YOu forgot about the tariffs that the North caused to be put into effect during the War of 1812. They caused undo hardship to the people of the South. The causes of the war were much more than slavery no matter how much people try to simplify it. Do some research into the taxation and trade issues of the time. You might be surprised. History really is written by the victor.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Granted, this is great news. However, this is only the first step in what promises to be a lengthy and expensive legal battle.
As Rambus pointed out, they're appealing this decision. In addition, this particular case only involved four Rambus patents, and Rambus claims to have over a dozen patents which affect SDRAM manufacture. Finally, just because Infineon escaped doesn't necessarily mean that Micron and Hyundai will as well.
Somebody else pointed out that we should buy Micron and Infineon RAM to show our support. I definitely second that motion.
I think all would be interested in this article especially considering what happened today. I well written look at both sides of the issue. Mark "Cheddar Cheeze" [Z]err http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature /may01/ram.html
Memory, memory everywhere. Memory by the bushel. Memory in impulse packging between the gum and the candy bars at the check out counter. These are great days.
Rejoice as the rats desert the sinking ship come Monday morning.
The Register has the dope.
This is what happens when the beancounters take over an IP company and they forget what it is that they are actually out there selling. If we look at the more successful silicon IP vendors out there (ARM is a good example) they package up the patent-orientated intellectual property with a support and service package which makes the purchase of their product worthwhile (ie, it gets the user of the IP product to market faster and cheaper than they otherwise would have done with an in-house design). In the past I've designed an ARM clone for personal use in an FPGA hack, but on a professional basis I recommend buying the real thing. If there's no difference in support between buying in external intellectual property and hacking it together yourself, the IP vendor hasn't got a business. QED Rambust.