Court Decision Favors Rambus

RoscoeP writes "This story from News.com: "A federal judge has overturned two counts of fraud against chip designer Rambus...". At least Rambus can't pursue litigation against Infineon for SDRAM though." See our previous stories about Rambus for far-too-much background.

Comments

This is awful.

[david.johns]

For the first time in a LOOONG time a company has (had) been charged with fraud, in connection with activities that constitute... well... fraud.

Aside - if it had been a DMCA violation, we would have been executing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprosecuting employees by now.

In my mind, at least, it's going to be very hard to maintain that their patents are bogus if they are not fraudulent. I don't know much about how our appeals system works (never had to use it, thank gods) but I expect that the higher court to whom they appeal cannot effectively re-open the investigation of fraud without Infineon also appealing.

That means the next case is (probably) going to go like this:

These your patents? Yup. This their RAM? Yup. Pay 'em. Case closed.

AFAIK there is no viable way for the court to assert anything else without a _major_ break from precedent.

Remember, though. IANAL. I really hope I'm wrong.

Quick look at PriceWatch

[rkischuk]

256 MB 800 mhz Rambus RDRAM - $87
512 MB 800 mhz Rambus RDRAM - $380

256 MB PC133 Micron SDRAM - $25
512 MB PC133 Micron SDRAM - $77

Remind me why I need this stuff? If you want to see the future of RAMBUS, reference "microchannel" expansion slots. It seems you can only strongarm an entire marketplace if you make software....

Re:Great!

[A Commentor]

When rambus cranks up the fees... 10, 20, 100% on DDR so that it subsidies their own RAMBUS memory and raises the DDR prices to higher that RAMBUS, you WILL care... but by then it'll be too late.