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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.
The link in trhe comment above deserves a thorough read before you start hitting it with your mod points.
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
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
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?
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.
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
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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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?
They were found to be liable.
Fight Spammers!
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
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!
Where are those mod points when I need them? This accusation deserves an answer.
Excepting Ex-President Clinton, whom only pays half, as he never inhaled.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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...
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--hongpong.com
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
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:[.]
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. 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.
However, Rambus managed to ire the entire industry and will now suffer from the industry's lack of support. No support == no contracts == no money.
Rambus was a smart idea that was implemented in possibly the worst possible way. They positioned themselves as the 'gatekeepers' to memory production, but through their actions completely turned the rest of the memory industry against them.
Dancin Santa
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