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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.
...and they're the only ones.
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
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.
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!
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
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?