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Rambus Found Guilty of Fraud
Joby Walker writes: "The jury in the Rambus v. Infineon case has found Rambus guilty of fraud in regard to their actions within JEDEC. Infineon was awarded $3.5M in punitive damages, but that has been reduced by the judge due to Virginia Law." Rambus says they'll appeal.
Rambus played an underhanded slimeball trick. Everyone who hears the story knows it. Now a jury has heard it, and Rambus is going down in flames. Justice is almost served. That's good.
But I have a question: HOW could a standards organization allow this to happen in the first place? How difficult is it to have all involved sign a binding agreement releasing all IP embodied in the standard to the public domain?
Most standards organizations I know of do this religiously. Most ad-hoc industry groups do it. What happened here? NOBODY thought this was necessary? ALL these companies were asleep at the wheel?
You'll excuse me if I don't show the proper amount of sympathy. In an industry where full knowledge of IP ownership is life or death to a company, SOMEBODY at each of these companies should be fired for not minding the store.
-- Rambus CEO Geoff Tate, quoted from the Yahoo article
The emphasis is mine. It's amazing how once you start paying attention to what these corporate criminals say, they always bring up how making them responsible for their actions is going to hurt the industry. I swear I've seen this phrase (or will see it) dozens of times, from dozens of different people. "Baseless" doesn't necessarily mean "not true". Notice how he doesn't ever say, "we did not commit fraud" -- rather, he spends most of his time trying to spin everything into FUD.
... is available on here on K5
Wrong. It's about patent law being pervasive and powerful enough to make this sort of action a worthwhile business risk. As it sits, patent law is bad.
Somehow, I don't think he'll be responding to any of this. That would be consistant with his behaviour detailed in the essay.
Now that's interesting... if you will look at the Slashdot homepage, check out how all but two stories are posted by michael. This seems to be more and more the case. Draw your own conclusions.
The link in trhe comment above deserves a thorough read before you start hitting it with your mod points.
That suggests that Rambus really grovelled to get a license signed with Samsung. I imagine the payments have already stopped.
Heck, I would have stopped payment as soon as the original decision was handed down. The fee was for licensing patents, and invalid ones aren't. And after today's fraud ruling, heck, a contract obtained under fraud is invalid and I would stop paying, letting Rambus decide if they think they can sue us to get the money.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
In the long run, I hope that the Patent system "smartens up" in the patents that they actually grant...
Hope all you want, but our government has seen to it that the PTO has ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to stop granting silly and frivolous patents. They get paid for them, and the courts get stuck sorting it all out. There is no accountability on their end. If you want them to shape up, you have to work to change the system.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Slowly the patent office will get more CS people who are skilled in Internet "technologies." The boom is also slowing, which will allow examiners to spend more time with each patent.
You're not likely to find many CS grads working for peanuts at the PTO. Since the PTO has to support itself (and is used as a revenue source by the government), they have every incentive in the world to grant every patent that comes through there if it hasn't already been patented, regardless of how obvious or silly it is. They are not held accountable for their decisions. They get paid regardless of whether it gets overturned later or not. They also have every incentive to start granting patents in new areas where patents may not even promote innovation (business methods, software, genomics, etc.).
First of all, we need to take the money out of the equation. If we want patents to be screened well and objectively considered, we need to remove the financial incentive to sell patents like Big Macs. The PTO should be funded by our taxes and it should offer examiners wages commensurate with what they would make working for a commercial company in their chosen field. Otherwise, we will always end up with unqualified or underqualified examiners who won't know what is obvious to one of normal skill in the field of the patent they are examining. If we want the patent system to work properly, we had better be prepared to pay what it costs to make it work properly.
Second, we should seriously reevaluate the effects that patents really have on innovation in various industries. I can pretty much guarantee that a 20 year software patent does not have the same benefit to that industry that a 20 year pharmaceutical patent or biotech patent might have in those industries. We should rethink term lengths for the various types of patents as well as whether certain types should be granted at all.
Until these things happen, the patent system will continue to be a mess that siphons resources off to the lawyers that could be better spent hiring more people in the various industries as well as doing more R&D in order to produce real innovations rather than just patenting every silly incremental improvement that someone thinks up.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Easy, look his/(her) user info:u rk
:( Sadly, because the cause was -is- noble.
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=w
1.-Posting the same accusation 5 times counts as trolling, isn't it?
2.-It's the only thing he posted. Maybe the account was made solely for the purpose of accusing Michael.
3.-All the web references come from a single, biased source.
4.-It's childish and ridiculous to be washing dirty laundry in public like this. If this is an example of they teamwork, this pitiful end is what they went after and deserved
5.-Yes, Michael must take his time to write a better explanation in the censorware site, and all the other guys would be better ushing their energy and time in the fight aganst censorware instead of fighting Michael, it's more whorty the former.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Yes they are very useful, but only when the patents are legitimate and are used to their intended purpose. These days anything under the sun is patentable (assuming it runs on a Sun, hehe, owww, bad joke...), business methods, code... Patents were also meant to encourage development and innovations, where people can build devices and other ideas (possibly patentable as well) on top of your patents, they're not supposed to be used by huge corporations to club their competition when the going gets tough.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
You're right. Patents should help real innovations but that means a company has to have a REAL innovation. :-)
Rambus got into this trouble by ignoring the simple rule that if you're on a standards committee, it's your job to tell that committee if any standard being proposed -- whether by yourself or others -- is a technology you are in the process of patenting.
Quite simply, there are only two possibilities here: Either (a) YOU are fraudulently encouraging others to adopt your technology while patenting it behind their backs, or (b) other people came up with the idea independently -- which really kind of blows that 'obviousness' thing in patent law out of the water, doesn't it!
The judgement that Rambus had committed fraud will almost certainly be used by another judge in a patent dispute. I'm no lawyer, but I'm fairly sure that if a patent was obtained thorugh fradulent means, that may be grounds for invalidating it.
Patents aren't evil at all - they're absolutely necessary, when properly applied, to protect the individual inventor. Without them, it would be completely impossible for most small manufacturers/business to remain in business. Sure, the system has problems, but patents are inherently good, just, and valuable.
It just seems like a funny tech song that has the same phrase at the bottom of every Chorus:
...they'll appeal."
"and RamBus says...
between the laws being bad, and the laws being badly applied.
Personally, I don't have any problem at all, with companies being able to patent, and profit from their inventions.
This case was all about a company suckering an entire industry into using their ideas in a standard. Then after the standard is widely adopted, and prohibitively expensive to back away from, the pop out with a patent that everyone is now in violation of. It's not about patent law being bad, it's just about sleazy business practices.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Seems a pity noone completely mirrored the website so they can tell Michael to just fuck off. Michael appears to be extremely childish according to the account in the article. It would be nice to hear an account from Michael in response to this article but it's quite possible (probable? hope not) that the childish behaviour is true and only abuse of the /. moderation system will happen instead.
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Delphis
Delphis
Looser pays winner's court cost? No, thanks. Big Hairy Corp would probably consider it a small investment to spend that additional 100K intimidating you by keeping you in court for a year or two. Yeah, you get your money back... but you've lost time, sleep, and gained nothing but stress over it.
Also... heaven forbid that you are the one to bring suit against BHCorp... you had better be damn sure you will win, because you sure as hell can't afford to pay their legal bills.
"Looser pays" only works if the two litigants have roughly the same assets. Once you get into a huge disparity, the side with the most money wins, because they cn afford to litigate in order to gain advantage, whether or not they win.
Now, if the proposal was "looser pays winners court costs, up to the amount that the looser spent in court", then you've got something that might work. If BHCorp spends $10,000,000 suing me, and I spend $1,000 defending myself and loose... well, I owe my lawyer $1,000, and BHCorp $1,000 towards their court costs. If I win, they have to shell out an additional $1000 to cover my court costs.
Overall, I think this is a better solution... the more you spend to try and win a case, the more you risk loosing.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Nice! I like it. When I become dictator of the world, I'm going to adopt what you just proposed.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I got 1.17 billion. Neat. Hopefully they are shelving this stuff on the top floor of their building, so it will eventually crush them into the ground.
Not so they can get rich by extorting others who are actually innovating by pushing a lot of paper.
And rambus pushes a TON of paper. For Q2, Rambus's legal bill was $7.3 million! I leave it to you to imagine the amount of paper that buys.
Rather, patents are a favor granted to benefit we the people with better products at lower rates.
Companies screaming about being robbed and having their "rights" violated (in this case by members of a jury of americans) should remember, those rights are there to serve us, not you.
Legit companies should be getting in to stop patent insanity, lest we (and crazy hippy protestors) throw the baby out with the bathwater.
This ruling does me good. Any way we can contact the judge and send him chocholates?
and also bumped into RMS in the .org pavillion. Doesn't that qualify?
When you and RMS were "bumping", where you fulling clothed and/or horizontal? Then it might count as better than sex.
cpeterso
True or not, RAMBUS managed to get busted. Think of it this way... the speed limit on most US freeways is 55 or 65 mph. Most people get off scot free. The most flagrant violators tend to get caught more often. The average speeder occasionally gets caught (depending on the time of the month due to "non-existent" quotas) and/or how much the local police need the cash.
RAMBUS got caught with its hands in the cookie jar. Is RAMBUS the average "Joe" company bends the rules just like everybody else, or the FLAGRANT bully in desparate need of a smack down... you decide.
You're not refering to the unified memory model are you? The concept was valid but only a small portion of people would use streaming video continuously. Given that latency caused issues in the other 95% of tasks (compilation etc), then the trade-offs was not worth it.
... but not otherwise.
If you wanted to process video off a server or have continuous video streaming overlay on textures, an O2 was perfect
LL
RAMBUS is going to appeal? Heck, Infineon ought to appeal the Virginia limitation of damages cap - shouldn't the cap be {damages + legal fees(trebled)} just to keep these bozos from frivolous suits?
John 17:20
this is only true if your legal system is up for sale.
I think this can be safely classified as a completely unexpected result. Careful, patent litigators. The sword you hold isn't just double-edged -- it's got no fuckin' handle either!
Not so unexpected. All one had to do was read the answer and summary judgment motions. Those arguments survived through trial for a reason.
You are objectively wrong on this point, as wrong as can be. It is a matter of record that the jury made no finding that the patent was invalid. Period.
Even if the judge were to hold Rambus' conduct (which the jury DID hold to be fraudulent) sufficient to give rise to a declaratory judgment of unenforceability, AND even if the Federal Circuit were to reverse existing precedent on unenforceability, this would not support the preceding remark suggesting the patent should not have issued.
A patent is issued, or not, based solely on the state of the prior art. Period. The patent office can determine invalidity of a claim, but not unenforceability of a claim were a patent to be granted. The patent office is without statutory and constitutional authority to make determinations that any ancilliary conduct would give rise to unenforceability.
So, sorry, you're just wrong. The patent system worked fine.
Yeah, the legal system sucks. Its the worst system on Earth for resolving commercial disputes, until you consider the alternatives.
I agree that there are few things dumber for two brilliant CEO's to do than to conclude that their high-tech disputes must be resolved by six random people off the street.
But these CEO's reached that conclusion. There were mediations, arbitrations, all sorts of efforts made to help the parties find some middle ground. None was to be had.
One competitor thought the other had engaged in fraud, the other thought the first had stolen their property. Rather than hiring soldiers or private police, they hired lawyers.
Here the patent system did the right thing. Rambus appears entitled to the patents they had, and the defendants appear not to have infringed those patents. The legal system, apart from the patent system, found certain commercial conduct to be fraudulent. This may ultimately feedback to limit the enforceability of the patent, maybe not.
The system worked because it answered the parties questions after a fair process; questions they couldn't resolve any other way.
If you know a better way to assure these results are properly and fairly adjudicated, I'd love to hear what you have in mind.
If you say so. For the record, this case has nothing to do with software patents. Reasonable people may disagree, but the broad consensus for hard science patents is that the patent system has superbly aided the flow of capital to technology intensive projects, and facilitated the broad disclosure and use of the same. Yes, of course, ANY RIGHTS AT ALL, tangible or intangible, property or personal integrity, will lead to disputes, and some plaintiffs are supposed to have lost -- one way to deter litigation is to adopt the simple rule:
All plaintiffs lose.
or its converse
All plaintiffs win.
Either rule leads to grave injustice. The absence of rights altogether leads to anarchy.
As I said, we have the worst system in the world, until you consider the alternatives.
It's been beaten to death on /. but the stupid patent laws have to go! This is at least a step in the right direction. I hope the trend continues.
Seems to me that the consensus here is that the patent system and courts worked just fine in this case.
I too see the ideals of patent theory as being valid. However, patents must not be issued for trivial inventions, as has been done far too much lately, and companies that abuse their patents should lose their rights to them. For example, RAMBUSt w.r.t. JEDEC and Unisys w.r.t. LZW compression.
> Samsung Electronics Co. can stop paying SDRAM and DDR royalties to Rambus if a court in any geographic region of the world determines that any company does not infringe the synchronous patents.
Going back to my other comment on this issue, I'd wager 500 quatloos that the phrase "flying fuck through a rolling doughnut" is uttered.
Any takers?
I saw Linus do a keynote address at LinuxWorld, and also bumped into RMS in the .org pavillion. Doesn't that qualify?
No, that's a mighty big incentive for companies to build RDRAM instead of DDR.
Getting SDRAM royalties would have been icing on the cake for RMBS - their goal all along was the elimination of DDR, whether by hook ("All your bus are belong to us!" infringement suits) or by crook (punitive royalty fees on anyone who falls for the "hook"). Frankly, I'd see the 3.5% royalty on DDR as an action bordering on antitrust.
But it's all moot, thanks to this ruling.
RMBS has a right to royalties on RDRAM. They invented RDRAM and can license the tech.
RMBS can go take a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut when it comes to royalties on SDRAM and DDR.
If the market decides that DDR provides better performance over RDRAM, then RMBS goes bankrupt. They invented a technology that the market decided not to adopt. Tough tittie for them.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of shitweasels.
don't forget - OJ was not guilty of murder, but still lost the civil trial and had to pay $$$ - he was financial responsible for the murders, but not guilty of them....
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---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
BTW...
That's German for, "The, Rambus, The!"
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
All the companies who wimped out to Rambus must just be seething right now...
*can just see their law offices right now*
"what do you mean we couldn't win???!!!"
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
You forget that the price of extortion is not constant.. it increases.
Had a nice little code chunk.. but the lameness filter wouln't let me post it.. oh well..
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
In the Netherlands you do get court costs awarded, only they are not the real costs but a statutory amound depending on the number of court meetings and how complicated the case was. A typical court case will cost (in court costs) about $ 1000. No way you can pay a lawyer with this. It stops people from bringing lawsuits and gives negotiating a much bigger appeal.
Joost
Actually, the claim is true, but what you fail to realize is that this is the motto of their legal department, not their technologists.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Sheesh.
p.s. GAT: E+++
-- veni vidi nuclei deceri --- I came, I saw, I dumped core.
Rambus RAM (RDRAM) is not all that bad. As a technology, it's pretty good. It's not something i would choose for my workstation, but for high bandwidth uses it's very good. I, for one, would like to see an Athlon RDRAM chipset for scientific computing.. or an Alpha one. When you're not making enough money and decide that you're going to try and blackmail everyone else in your marketspace instead of building a better competing product, then you lose all of my respect. Rambus got what it deserved.
- --
"I Hate Quotes" -- Samuel L. Clemens
http://www.m-cam.com/patentlyobvious/20010223_ramb us.pdf
An interesting thing is that this report was issued back on February 23rd. Rather interesting reading it now, in light of what has happened recently.
M-CAM also has other reports that they have posted (for free) on high profile patent cases. There's a list at:
http://www.m-cam.com/patentlyobvious/contents.html
Companies discussed include: IBM, Qualcomm, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Priceline.com, and British Telecom.
Some of these reports are favorable for the companies/patents involved. However, a lot of them question the validity of specific patents, and suggest potental prior art problems which could be used to challenge the patents involved.
Has anyone considered a new model for patents whereby the length of the patent would be proportional to the amount of research time/money expended? And/or inversely proportional to the hobbling effect of said patent on society? Saying, in effect, 'you can make a profit but you cannot get filthy rich and you cannot impose an undue burden on society'?
Test 1 2 3 4
>Seems to me that the consensus here is that the patent system and courts worked just fine in this case. Erm, are you posting under the wrong story or something? The only reason that this issue is a hot-spot is because the patent system didn't work in the first place, by granting a patent on an invention already commonly in use (sending data on the up and down cycles of memory - in DDR-RAM).The patent system did not work and now the jury has spoken, invalidating the patent. The courts (under the direction of a jury, mind you, not a judge with stock options:) worked to prevail over one of the many flaws in the patent system.
IANAL, but unless I'm mistaken, fraud is a criminal charge, not a civil matter. If I am found guilty of fraud, I go to jail or pay a heavy fine.
I think you could make this work. Modify it a bit though. Loser pays a ratio of winners court costs that is equal to the ratio difference in their net income? That probably still has problems because everyone tries to make it look like they made less than they really did to try to get out of paying taxes.
It would also be interesting for companies like amazon that operate in the red. The looser could actually make money in this case :)
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
>Wow, that would actually be a shitload of money, right?
No, the losing lawyers, company executives and shareholders should be forced to eat the settlement in the form of nickels, dimes, quarters, and loonies (a.k.a. dollar coin), and have the pleasure of paying out the ass.
I know this is from Rambus, but I found the following tidbit interesting:
"Rambus abided by JEDEC's rules despite the fact that these rules have been shown to be confusing, conflicting, poorly communicated and generally not complied with by other JEDEC members."
I wonder if that holds any water... perhaps Rambus is the only one that got caught, or at least the only one that has abused their JEDEC rules violations...
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That line of thinking does hold true when coupled with the strongly held opinion of corporations that its not worth doing if you don't get paid for it.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Did you notice in the article that they're citing that this law will slow innovation because people can no longer patent standards?
n ovation- ---------
It seems to me that companies in court these days are using the word "Innovation" like the boy who cried wolf. If it can't be used to churn a profit, it's stifling innovation. First microsoft bashing GPL and Open Source products, now Rambus.
"Stifling Innovation" is the newest buzz-word for "We don't like it and we can't profit off it".
Here, guys. Let me help you out.
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=in
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and in the immortal words of Nelson, HA..ha!
RDRAM is also known as Rambus-DRAM. Can't get much more nom-centric than that.
Except you can't buy "RAMBUS brand" RDRAM. I couldn't even find a link on rambus.com to any retailers selling RDRAM sticks themselves; the "Where to Buy" page mentions only systems that use Rambus memory.
A technology development company gains more credibility if it has a "house brand" of hardware. If Rambus wanted a credible claim on SDRAM technology (as opposed to a Lawsuit Company reputation), it could have sold "RAMBUS brand" DDR SDRAM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sure, it's nice to say that a company should "make things". However, the business model that Rambus (and Lucent, et al) uses is not necessarily flawed. A company dedicated to pure tech research can probably churn out ideas much faster than one also burdened with actually implementing those ideas.
Well, if Rambus wanted not to have a perception of "a company whose product is lawsuits," it could have structured its business model more like Transmeta's. A company gains a lot more respect if its trademark is the PRIMARY trademark on a widely used product. Transmeta achieves this by contracting work out to fabs and then putting the TRANSMETA CRUSOE name, not some fab's name, on the end product.
By licensing these patents to manufacturers, a Rambus or Lucent can focus on improving the technologies they already have and creating new ones along the way.
But by putting its own name on the product, it potentially gains more street credibility with the "information wants to be free" crowd.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The word you're seeking is "loser", not "looser".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I suppose that means that they didn't ever discriminate based on tennis or squash or badminton. Or maybe it means that employees were not not forced to be quiet.
Anti-racketing -- anti-racketeering. Whatever. Maybe anti-ratcheting means the same thing, too.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
This is only a problem if your business plan doesn't actually include making a product, as was the case with RMBS. If you do make a product, then sitting on standards committees is vital. Unless you're MSFT.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
No doubt Rambus was trying to really rush through a royalty deal. But it would have been crazy for any company to sign without such a disclaimer, especially when there is a good chance of Rambus' royalty scheme being struck down.
Heh just a week after my message about rambus, I could rephrase it with lowering the price of the share :) lol
.com mania.
-10% today, 16,800,000 volume... closed at $12.80 from a high near $120.
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?
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.
If rambust's management would have been in the waste disposal buisness, they would have patented crap and sued every single human (or animal for that matter) on the planet... uh oh, I hope none of the management are reading this and getting ideas :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
How about the USPTO becomes liable for half of any damages awarded due to granting patents that a court later overturns
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Fight Spammers!
Fight Spammers!
It has already happened. It's a counterclaim. Generally, if you are sued, you are required to bring any claim you have against the party that has filed suit as a counterclaim. If you fail to, you may be barred from bring suit later.
Fight Spammers!
They were found to be liable.
Fight Spammers!
If by "just fine", you mean already caused several other companies to cough up protection money in excess of the $350,000 Rambus has to pay now.
The balance is actually in the current patent laws. Patent applications must prove that the invention is "Non-obvious." The reason that we have so man "obvious" patents is that 1) examiners are overworked and likely to just grant the patent and let the courts fight it out later. 2) Internet technologies and the state of the art are advancing more rapidly than patent examiners can stay current in. This also adds to reason number 1. That is why I still believe in the patent system. Just give it some time to correct itself. Slowly the patent office will get more CS people who are skilled in Internet "technologies." The boom is also slowing, which will allow examiners to spend more time with each patent. Anyway, patents and IP are kind of my thing, so if you have any mroe questions, please post them below.
I'll say :-)
You can't keep a business running like that. Eventually patent fraud will catch up with you, at least if the fraudulent patent is something significant.
It's like that whole Magnaquench (sp?) thing that was posted earlier today -- they may have a legitimate claim on the patent, but it's suspicious because they're going for deep pockets instead of going after the persons doing the direct infringement. Rambus is going the magnet people one better, though, because they're actually trying to stretch the patent to cover something that it doesn't cover.
Rambus actually reminds me of a lawsuit brought by a company called Imatec against Apple a couple of years ago over ColorSync. Imatec, as far as anyone could determine, was a one-horse operation that tried to pull a patent shakedown on Apple over color-matching algorithms. They lost, and I don't think they even exist anymore (their website is unavailable as I check right now).
/Brian
You realize that such a reasonable, well-thought-out post utterly blows away any aura of psychohood that you might have been working to achieve with a handle like Dancin Santa, don't you?
RDRAM is interesting from a technical standpoint anyway, since it seems to represent the same philosophy that's leading to USB replacing paralell connections for printers and such: sooner or later, it doesn't matter worth a damn how wide your pipe is as long as you can slam data through fast enough to get where it needs to be. Whether back-burnering latency issues is a productive way to go I don't know; I'm not a sandbender. But it's not a bad idea technically, if you can get it to work. The real question is whether it was ever necessary in the first place; latency or not, you still have to slam the data through fast enough. The question thus becomes not whether it's a good idea, but whether it can be pulled off. So far, Rambus hasn't quite done it (it's all a blur above half a gigahertz anyway) and it doesn't look like they're going to have the chance to.
/Brian
Why is it that the number of times a company uses the word "innovation" is directly related to how much I distrust them?
I think this can be safely classified as a completely unexpected result. Careful, patent litigators. The sword you hold isn't just double-edged -- it's got no fuckin' handle either!
Here go all my karma points but the only thing I have to say is:
NYAH!
I think I speak for everyone in saying it's nice to see Rambus get theirs. I can't stand sleazy corporations and Rambus set new standards. IP law doesn't have to be evil, it's good to hear the courts agree (at least sometimes!)
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It was good, because it exposed another failed business model. Rambus didn't make things they created lawsuits. Intellectual Property is one thing if you are actively using it to produce goods and services, instead, Rambus used it to collect royalties alone. For Rambus the problem rests in the fact that just as they are getting immensely profitable, other companies are looking at the costs and deciding that bringing suit is a financially viable option, win or lose. When the business model reaches this stage, it is nothing more than a high stakes flip of the coin - anyone who thinks legal proceedings are anyhting but is fooling themselves.
On one other note: they were found guilty of fraud - the patents have not been invalidated. A Plaintiff still needs a judge to invalidate the patents before the memory makers are completely out of the woods. I, for one, am hoping that Judge Payne does just that and everyone can come to closure on who is shafting whom.
However, a number of Rambus executives had the good fortune of selling shares while Rambus was up and made a lot of money.
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
I think I've made my point.
I thought the same when my post got modded down as "offtopic", But I find it more logical to attribute such mod to a user than to an editor because...If you have admin priviledges you delete the post altogether, you don't mod it down. Note that my assuption is that Slashdot editors are:
1) Ethical
2) Tech savvy
3) Have an admin account to the DBMS
Where are those mod points when I need them? This accusation deserves an answer.
It costs a lot of money to defends oneself against a suit, and it has become quite popular of late to file suit merely to discourage certain activities of certain individuals. Capping punitive awards encourages such waste of the courts time by limiting the exposure to a counter-suit.
The article says that Infineon is going to look for a judgement of "equitable estoppel" on the patents. Anyone wanting to know exactly what this is can go here. Quite interesting, and with a precedent.
If it were a criminal charge it would be "People (or something like that) vs. Rambus," not "Infineon vs. Rambus" as it is.
That's why Infineon is going for a ruling of equitable estoppel on the patents (see previous post for what this is). Their patents will still be technically valid, but they will be kept from enforcing those patents due to the fact that "their hands were not clean" when they were awarded.
Reminds me of a book for my kids:
....
;)
The system on the RamBus go
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,
The lawyers on the Ranbus go
quack, quack, quack,
quack, quack, quack,
quack, quack, quack,
The execs on the Rambus go
boo-hoo-hoo,
boo-hoo-hoo,
boo-hoo-hoo,
The
You get the point
"Life is like a dogsled... if you're not the lead dog, the scenery never changes."
... not to be redundant (I know it is) but it's about time Rambus finally got chopped down for their behaviour. I thought it was bad enough when they wanted to collect large royalties on RDRAM, but when they expanded their claims to include all forms of SDRAM in an attempt to corner the memory market, that's when things got out of hand.
The only thing I think that's bad about this ruling is the Virgina law that limits punitive damages.. Infineon really deserves the money given their stand-up attitude towards Rambus.
I still don't get how Rambus claims they "innovate" anything.. stealing ideas from JEDEC or patenting obvious extensions to existing technology isn't innovation, it's patent-shopping at it's finest. It disturbs me to this day that Rambus' website has the claim "We never stop innovating.".
Best hopes to Infineon on the appeals process.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
I think are planning on a new chipset for the Pentium 4 to support DDR RAM. Sorry I have no refrence for this.. Only that Intel is not known for sitting still while the competion does this.. http://www.ebnews.com/story/OEG20000718S0042. I am sure they will compete with this. Too much litigation gives one a black eye.
The truth shall set you free!
"Dream on, you crazy, idealistic nerds"
You forgot paranoid.
"The only thing dumber than the republicans, are the democrats, and the people who believe in either."
Show me an effect without cause and then I'll believe in chaos.
So what's going to happen to good ol' Intel now? Are they going to stop trying to push all their customers into buying overpriced RDRAM so that they can get all that RMBS stock as their contract with Rambus stipulated? Or if they don't, are the memory companies going to slow or halt RDRAM production, causing prices to rise even more, and making the Pentium 4 look that much worse next to the Athlon? I think the next few years are going to really hit Intel hard since they've pretty much locked themselves into RDRAM with the P4.
It's rather poetic, when you think about it.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There are moments in history when a preposterous defense like, "there was too much pine tar on the bat" or "the rules were confusing" will be summoned. Martin's responsibility was to charge the excessive use of pine tar before Brett hit the ball. Rambus' responsibility was in clearing up and misunderstandings of rules and disclosing their own activities regarding patents.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Excepting Ex-President Clinton, whom only pays half, as he never inhaled.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"We're appealing."
Not to the computer world, you aren't!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
And what about the children?
We have to protect the children!
Something constantly complained about on Slashdot actually got its just desserts! Perhaps MS will meet its end and the RIAA will dissolve into puffs of anti-trust legislation... Dream on, you crazy, idealistic nerds...
--
--hongpong.com
Lesson? Don't attend standard setting committee meetings. Set your own standards.
From the article: Rambus Inc. had committed fraud by failing to disclose its synchronous patent applications to the industry JEDEC standards body.
It was bad enough when we only had suspicions that corporations might abuse the patent system in a general sense by using patent chill -- like libel chill, where the threat of a lawsuit discourages actions -- like with what Amazon was doing to internet vendors with their one-click patent. Now it looks like they're willing to try to find exploits within an already unreasonable system.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Maybe this will set a precedent to help destroy the "frivolous lawsuits rather than honest work" business model.
Awww, poor widdle Rambus. Couldn't sue all your competition out of business. Crap! Now you'll have to, like, commit yourselves to making quality products to increase market share. That's gotta suck. Competition is soooo unfair, right guys?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Is there really justice in the world?
I guess so.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
They just make sure to cram their standard down everyone's throught, then make themselves imcompatable. (*cough*SOAP*cough*)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
... says that Infineon just kicked Rambus' @$$!!! The ruling won't make up for all the hell Rambus' caused, but it's a start. I am SO glad the judge and jurors finally used some common sense!
Chaos is the order of the day...
For now, we can hope that the silly (one-click) patents get thrown out in court case challenges such as with Rambus. In the long run, I hope that the Patent system "smartens up" in the patents that they actually grant...
"I dream of a world where... ah, fuck it."
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Well, of course companies seek to make a profit off of their "intellectual property". As an investor, would you support spending millions upon millions on R&D if you knew that the minute you launched a product, somebody could reverse-engineer it for almost nothing and put you out of business?
Patent laws ENCOURAGE Innovation because it ensures that people can reap the rewards of successful R&D, and can recoup the money they invest.
Without Patent protection, companies would be much more leary about investing so heavily in new technology development.
However, I agree that there's limits... some of the patents that get granted are downright silly and obvious. There's got to be a limit to what's patentable, but there still has to be patents.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
A slightly less predatory pricing scheme might have alienated less companies and given them a solid base of royalties for quite a while. Now, if other companies have contract clauses similar to Samsung, they stand to lose big money from companies they thought they had in the bag.
As soon as the appeal court notices that this is a US company versus a European company they'll decide that the verdict damages the US economy and over turn it.
PS. This is a TROLL
im sorry, but did hell just freez over???
Come on, it had to!!!
"t's worth noting that what Rambus got slammed for was lying to the JEDEC committee about whether it planned to patent the technologies it was proposing for the standard. Unfortunately, this does not touch on their right to sue everyone who ever manufactured a RAM chip for patent infringement."
Au Contraire!
This has a CHILLING effect on any future RAMBUST Goon tactics. This is a damming precedent. RAMBUS can now be called "that fradulent IP company".
It doesn't stop them from FILING lawsuits, only because ANYONE can sue ANYONE for ANYTHING at ANYTIME in our wonderful (fucked up) US "justice" system.
However, this case is precedent and "case law" that will erect a VERY high wall that RAMBUS will have to pole vault to get their cases heard and decided in their favor.
This judge/jury must have been REALLY horrified by what RAMBUST was up to...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
TSIA. It's achievable if you work at it -- though why anyone would try is a mystery to me.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I personally see patents as being a useful and even necessary evil in a capitalist world, but our own patent office has gone completely off its rocker in the last couple of decades. This bitchslap would have been much more satisfying if it had been for the fraudulent act of suing everyone in sight over something that obviously should never have been patentable in the first place since it was clearly described in prior art.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
If the sheets of paper in question are the small green ones, I'd say it's just about exactly 7.3 million.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
You must have missed the memo.
:-)
Just because they aren't laughing at you doesn't mean you're not funny. Or something to that effect.
Dancin Santa
Remember what I said earlier? Uhh... forget it..
Seems I was a little too irrationally exuberant.
Dancin Santa
It's been beaten to death on /. but the stupid patent laws have to go! This is at least a step in the right direction. I hope the trend continues.
I know...I decided the ^H business looks more funny. One, two, five...no! three, four... :)
Besides, IIRC (or not so C), ^W only works in insert mode. But 'db' is still not as funny as imagining a PR flak counting letters.
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
hehe, PR statements are fun to play with...
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
Yeehaw!
This is to me (as to most others here) extremely happy news. Infineon did the only right thing to do, and theres nothing amazing about it. But compared to the other spineless memory makers out there, they had the guts to stand up for their rights. The compensation they were awarded was cut down to merely a symbolic sum ($350k), and I think Infineon deserves better. In my mind, Infineon (and Micron & Hynix) did something really important in standing up to Rambus, and I respect them a lot for it. So I would like to ask people to keep this in mind in the future when they buy memory and other products in the markets these companies are in. I know I will.
(I know they all most likely did it for economic reasons, but without them, the world could have been held memory-hostage to Rambus, a world I would not be happy in. )