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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.
It's nice to see a judge standing up against large companies, to stop them from throwing lawsuits around against smaller companies
I'm not positive...but I believe Infineon is a larger company than Rambus.
Well, not yet. This is what they are fighting about. But if Rambus prevails, this is what will happen. Let's just hope they die a horrible death.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
IANAL, but will go out on a limb to say that the job of US courts is to interpret according to US laws, not laws of other countries, or the EU. US courts do not fall into line behind the decisions of other EU courts, unless the judge is senile.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Clearly this is false since both VIA and SiS are coming out with P4/DDR chipsets this month (and Intel with a P4/SDR one). The only thing delaying the DDR version of Brookdale is validating it (this is Intel's first DDR chipset while VIA and SiS have more experience with it).
...and they're the only ones.
Check out The Inquirer for more information. They said the court makes no difference to the patent infringement case.
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Error 500: Internal sig error
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have a chipset (and for that matter, a CPU) specially designed around the RDRAM, you get something like double the effective memory speed.
Of course, that's assuming you can get the chipset and CPU working right, which isn't easy. I think this is one of the reasons Intel is backing out of their support for RDRAM.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Infineon and Rambus have been battling in European courts over the same issues, and the EU judge had cleared Rambus of any fraud charges, so it seemed like it was only a matter of time before the US courts fell in line with that decision.
Doesn't work that way, thankfully. Their patents can still be held illegitimate. Only the fraud charge was overturned, and fraud is a much more serious issue (and much harder to prove) than simple filing of an invalid patent. Fraud requires knowledge that the patent was false, as well as intent to obtain money thereby, as well as goodness knows how many other additional legal hurdles, whereas patent invalidity simply requires that the court determines that the patents were granted erroneously, with no question of intent or motive.
As an analogy to the courtroom scenario you describe, suppose I am in posession of some stolen property. They can't prove I stole it. Do I therefore get to keep it? No. Regardless of whether I actually comitted a crime in obtaining it, it still doesn't legitimately belong to me, and must be returned to the owner.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
Considering their aim is to be an Intellectual Property innovator and owner, they'd better be. Las time I looked they were pumping 50% of their revenues into legal wrangling. This must be the reality of being and IP company, beg, buy or steal then defend or bluster, and hope like heck your oppenents aren't A) Many B) Richer C) Smart
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Geoff Tate would leap from the bushes, run down the street and fax the design to the US patent office, then sue unless he was paid a stipend.
Lucent would attempt to make the cans and string and lose a large fortune, requiring massive layoffs at their lemonade stand.
Steve Case would be adamant that the string have a huge granny knot in it to be more effective
Bill Gates would say it has to be 4 inch braided nylon rope with a detour through his house
Larry Ellison would hold his breath and turn purple unless the cans were imported from Japan
Thomas Penfield Jackson would call Gates a big stupid jerk and get dragged home by his mother and grounded for a week
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They believe what they are doing is protecting their inventions. I mean, to them, SDRAM is just an extention of RDRAM (incorporates such things like Delay Gate technology), which is why they should extend their claims to SDRAM. Infineon then claims no, they invented it first, and shouldn't have to pay for anything. At the end, it will just rely on prior art, and in that case, Rambus seriously believes that it can win (at least, for DDR DRAM). This is what I hear from a bunch of Rambus employees.
There you go ...
You got a patch for known problem and you applied it.
The only difference from commercial products is that it was source patch as opposed to binary one.
I fail to see any advantages here. I mean what is so superior about performing recompile instead of simply downloading patched kernel?
All in all, it's still a really bad thing for Rambus, as they've got to be running so low on revenues, from slumping sales in the IT market, that they should be considering out of court settlement with the manufacturers. Although such a concession might be too late.
Yet there's still the matter of Rambus vs Infineon in a german court, where a technology expert was appointed recently, and the italian procedings which looked like a win for Rambus, but the judge put on hold. Wait and see.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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....
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
Here's a link to the actual docket http://www.rambusite.com/RambusVsInfineon/Docket.h tm .
It probably would be nice to have someone comment on what was exactly denied in the ruling.
His job is to keep the network running.
His tools consist of whatever software is provided by his employer, whatever tools he brings to the job, and his wits and skills.
If chasing down a kernel bug is what it takes to keep the network running, then that's what it takes. I would hope and expect that he didn't do this in a vacuum, and consulted with kernel developers somewhere in the process.
Being able to say, "I tweaked the kernel and fixed the problem." isn't the point. Nor is saying, "It's Microsoft's problem, and a fix is due tomorrow/next week/next month."
The point is that the network is up, and because the Source was available, he could apply all of his wits and skills to the task. Without the Source, he's working with fewer resources.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Every time you purchase memory, you put a little cash back in Rambus' pocket. Or am I completly off my rocker?
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.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
But even if they're not criminally liable, the amount of bad publicity they've recieved in the last little while can't be anything but bad for busines. What with the fraud cases themselves as well as Intel dropping support, added to the cost difference between Rambus and SDRAM, they've distanced themselves from the majority of the geek community, something that other notable companies can afford to do, but they can't. When SDRAM is less than CDN$35 for 128mb, It's just impossible to sell on truse alone when you have no more trust.
Now it's just sit back and wait for more bad news for Rambus.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Ya, getting the source is such a pain in the ass. Do any of you know of any warez sites where I can download the source?
http://saveie6.com/
Just up on Yahoo news: Shareholder suit filed in US District Court of Northern California on charges of fraud in representing their patents on SDRAM.
There's some serious blood in the water here. Could this be the beginning of the end?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now for once and for all, since it's only a sig: (and for some strange reason people just don't get it)
I always thought it was more of an "I'm a geek and like girls in general." I think we can all follow the logic from there and most of us can relate to it somewhere back there.
Now back to your regularly scheduled RAMBUS-related-discussion. Sorry to have wasted your time.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Boy, what a difference spin makes. Check this article out:
http://biz.yahoo.com/st/010810/28625.html
Seems pretty much pro-Rambus.
Now look at this one:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010810/100178.html
Basically a reprint of Infineon's press release. Boy, and you thought the patent system was confusing! So what's the real analysis?
But the court granted Infineon's request to prohibit Rambus from pursuing further litigation regarding Infineon's SDRAM memory and ordered Rambus to pay $7.1 million in Infineon's legal fees.
OUT
It's nice to see a judge standing up against large companies, to stop them from throwing lawsuits around against smaller companies who cant afford great legal defenses. Maybe this will (*cough ADOBE cough*) stop (*cough ADOBE cough*) from suing smaller groups over trivial (or perhaps nonsense) items.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Yes, but we're not talking about the finer points of patent law in this case; we're talking about fraud, which is a pretty much the same thing in both courts. Also, this case has international scope, because Infineon is a European company. These two court cases aren't happening in separate vacuum-sealed spaces, either.
So it is quite likely that, upon reading the EU judge's decision, that Robert E. Payne applied similar logic to the case over here.
My point is that the laws are the same. Fraud, murder, theft -- it doesn't matter if you're in Liverpool, Rome, Tijuana, Montreal, or Dallas; they have the same definition. Reparations are different, and the processes for making judgment are different, but we don't disagree on what it is the way we do on, say, patents.