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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?
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.
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
>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.
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.
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.
> "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.
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
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
"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.
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.
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!
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/
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.
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
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
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!
The Rambus model of Success(?): 10% Inspiration, 90% Litigation
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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.
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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
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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).
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/
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...
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.