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."

Comments

not a done deal...

[AlphaSys]

Remember, the appeals court is just handing this back to the lower court for reconsideration. All the appeals court has said is the prosecution hasn't made a clear enough case. Also, remember the FTC is hard against RAMBUS in this:

The FTC has asked an administrative law judge to rule immediately against Rambus, saying the company engaged in a campaign of "massive" document destruction at least partly out of concern that some internal documents could be used to press antitrust charges against the company and invalidate its valuable patents.

Rambus maintains the document destruction was part of the company's regular document retention policy...

Which leads one to wonder... what is that policy? Destroy it before the prosecution gets ahold of it? Sure they started shredding before the investigation, but then again, wouldn't you if you knew what you had done? I imagine the shredding began on the eve of the first injunction they (RAMBUS) filed!

Re:Freedom to innovate

[foonf]

Thank goodness that the Microsofts and the Rambuses in the world are protecting the freedom to innovate...we all know (smaller companies) are totally incapable of innovation.

This is funny, but there is a problem with the (implied) argument. Rambus is not a very large company as they come, in fact it is basically a small fabless company which is totally dependent for revenue on licensing its intellectual property. It is nowhere near as large as Infineon (formerly the semiconductor division of Siemens AG), not to speak of Microsoft. Second, Rambus actually has designed technology...RDRAM is basically an original technology, and much more of a departure from conventional memory architecture than DDR or any of its competitors. Whether it is a better technology right now, in practice, is another matter, and there are apparently major problems producing RDRAM modules at the moment. Furthermore, no one disputes that the SDRAM patents that were at issue in this case were valid, and concerned technologies that Rambus actually did develop themselves.

There are basically two things about Rambus that are reprehensible, though -- neither of them have anything to do with innovation. First, they didn't disclose their patents at the time they were on a committee that was designing the SDRAM technology (which they are now suing manufacturers of), and second, their current attempts to support themselves through royalties relating to this undisclosed patent. And the second, while disturbing, is not illegal.