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Rambus Wins Case Against Infineon
rednoise writes "Yahoo is running a story about how a Federal Circuit Court in California (I think) has (unbelievably) ruled that RAMBUS did NOT intentionally mislead members of JEDEC when the committee was developing the SDRAM specification. RAMBUS' stock skyrocketed something like 57% on the news. This is very bad news for owners of computers."
You might consider reading the article a little more carefully. It's being sent back for "reconsideration." Nor did the article say that the court found they did NOT perpetrate a fraud... it just said that it wasn't proven that they did.
So, it's neither good news nor bad news for anyone but Rambus, since they're not dead in the water. Infeneon will have to keep going.
In a nutshell, Rambus thinks that they own (at least part of) the SDRAM specs. When their own RAM flopped due to being too expensive and not offering enough performance, they resorted to suing just about every RAM manufacturer around for using "their" SDRAM spec. Mind you, Rambus did aid JEDEC in defining the spec, but, as I understand it, lied about the availability of some patents that Rambus had so they could be incorporated into the "open" SDRAM spec.
As soon as Rambus's real business began to suffer, they turned around and said "Actually, no, we changed our mind and now you DO have to pay us huge sums of money to use this spec that has now become an industry standard".
So, it's bad for computer users because Rambus is going to levy huge "royalty" fees against other RAM manufacturers, and that cost is gonna get passed right back to us, the customers. Say goodbye to the $12 128MB chip...
Arseholes to 'em, I says.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
The EETimes article on this story has (besides a lot more meat) a bit of an insight:
"Having framed the duty of disclosure in the above terms, the court concluded that Rambus did not breach its duty as to the SDRAM standard because none of the claims in its patents and pending patent applications reads on that standard," [legal analyst] Balto added.
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> but the effect of Rambus royalties is insignificant at best.
Ah yes, the "it only costs us a couple of bucks, why worry" argument. So, when DRM laws get passed, and all the DACs on your sound card have to support DRM and they start costing $7 per unit on the sound card instead of a couple of cents, don't worry? And the same in the CD/DVD drive.. And then the video card makers find out about one of the partners in the AGP spec have a patent on something or other and video cards cost $15 more for "royalties", and then the network cards, and so on and so on, and then all together that brand new PC costs an extra $100 as a result of legislation and royalties, we just should suck it up because it's only a bit here and a bit there?
>I read a while ago about the cost of RDRAM. The cost premium has not so much to do with Rambus royalties as it does low yields during fabrication.
So that's the buyer's fault that they have an inherently less efficient production process? And almost nobody was paying Rambus royalties, because almost nobody besides a couple of Rambus' best friends was/is making RDRAM anyway, since DDR SDRAM is cheaper and faster.
>The story mentioned that in the total cost of a 128 or 256 MB RIMM, some 3-5 dollars was the royalty.
>This was also when memory prices were significantly higher per meg.
The price of a DIMM on a per meg basis will not have any effect on the royalies that go to RAMBUS as a result. If a DIMM cost $25 before and $30 now, when its price would have dipped to $10, it'll still cost $15.
> Maybe $3-5 pisses you off a whole lot, but in exchange for great memory design (RDRAM is damn good for P4) I'd say its a small price to pay.
>I didn't here you complaining that Philips owns the CD standard.
Maybe that's because Philips didn't sit on a council to decide what the next audio system to replace cassette tapes was going to be, secretly patent a whole pile of technology around CDs, then push everyone to adopt CDs, wait a few years for CDs to become firmly entrenched in the marketplace, bring out their own SuperCD(TM) format, watch it tank, and then turn to Sony and all the others who used the "jointly developed" CD standard for all of their devices and go "Hey guys, we've got this patent we never told you about on the CD format to do with X. As a result you all owe us $5 a player. Large bills preferred. Thanks."
No. Instead Philips developed the standard themselves with Sony's help and both licensed it to everyone, up front, with clear and open terms . And, Philips is rather adamant about defending the standard as well. All of these "copy protected" audio discs aren't allowed to use the "Compact Disc" logo, you'll notice. Philips won't let them.