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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."
Thank goodness that the Microsofts and the Rambuses in the world are protecting the freedom to innovate. Why, if they ewre taken down, people would be forced to buy things from smaller companies which as we all know are totally incapable of innovation.
Now I'm going to McDonalds for a delicious cheeseburger.
Wow, I'm going to start a company and my goal will be to win as many court cases as possible. That'll pump up my stock price!
The company's stock soared on the news, rising $54.75, or 57 percent, to close at $11.69 on Nasdaq.
Ah, Yahoo.
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.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is based in Washington D.C. They hear appeals from all Patent cases, and almost all of the judges are former patent attorneys. Because Patent cases are so rarely litigated, many district court judges make poor decisions on the law (especially in constructing claims) when they actually have to handle a case. The court overturning the appeal does not necessarily mean that Rambus wins the patent case. The court ruled that, in construing the claims, the judge defined 5 terms wrong. It is still possible to find that Infineon does not infringe the patents. The court also overturned the fraud charges because they felt that the JEDEC did not uniformly enforce their patent policy. This decision shows why it is important that these standards groups be very strict in composing and enforcing their patent policies so crap like this doesn't happen.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
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.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
But that isn't the point. Yes, they have the patent. The problem is that they were part of the standards body (SDRAM?) that pushed for technology that Rambus was in the process of (?had already?) patented. I think it was Rambus's duty to disclose the patent when they were helping to set the standard.
That's not the issue, the issue is that JEDEC addopted the technology as standard and RAMBUS went behind everyone else's backs and patented it. Quoth the article:
Infineon, of Germany, and some other technology companies have accused Rambus of tricking computer-chip makers into adopting technologies for which it held or was seeking patents for chips in a wide range of electronic gear.
Antitrust enforcers at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission leveled similar accusations in a lawsuit filed last year.
This is not a simple case of patent infringement that you seem to think it is.
-- iCEBaLM
Umm iirc this case isn't because Rambus invented the iron-steel-copper interconnecting rails and patented them, it's because they invented them, got everyone to agree to make them the standard, retool their factories to make them AND THEN patented them, pretty much screwing them.
If you made a chip that ran at 10 ghz right now because of your skill with iron-steel-copper interconnecting rails, and patented it in September of 2003, and the following year Intel used the same process, would you like it?
No!
The fact of the matter is Rambus lied to the JEDEC. I don't care if they held the patent (a piece of paper that only has power because you agree it has power) for 200 years. They lied. And shame on you mods for seeing insight in that post. Unless you are so stupid that it truly was insightful.
It's incredibly scarey when the company that actually owns the patent to the technology that is the future of RAM can't play fair with the other children.
Not intending to mislead the JEDEC is no excuse to doing it. They either did or didn't. Try telling a traffic cop you didn't intend to speed.
- We are all so caught up in hating RAMBUS, that we fail to realize
- they rightfully own the patent under U.S. law no matter how many other people violated it...
That's not the point. The point is, that when the JEDEC (of which RAMBUS Inc. was and is a member) was working up the SDRAM spec, RAMBUS somehow "forgot" to mention that they already had a patent on something that was going into the spec.In other words, it's not a matter of RAMBUS rightfully owning the patent under U.S. law and it never was. It's a matter of RAMBUS implicitly giving JEDEC (and any user of the free and open JEDEC SDRAM spec) a free license to use that patent when they "forgot" to tell the group about this little patent they had.
So yes, RAMBUS owns the patent. However, they gave up their right to enforce it when they misled the JEDEC into incorporating it into the SDRAM standard.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
It's a different case, and here's why.
At the time that the SDRAM spec was created, great steps were taken to make sure that the spec did not contain patented material, or that the company with the patent did not plan on pursuing royalties. Essentially, Rambus was asked if they had any patents relating to the SDRAM spec. Rambus said, basically, "Don't worry about it."
So JEDEC happily went on to create the SDRAM spec in the confidence that all companies involved had shown good faith.
Later, once SDRAM was everywhere, Rambus tried to make everyone switch to their vastly more expensive Rambus RDRAM. When no one wanted to pay for it, it looked like curtains for Rambus, right? WRONG!
Rambus turned around and said "Oh, by the way, we DO have patents on stuff in the SDRAM spec, and now we're going to collect insane amounts of money because it's now the industry standard."
The issue is not, and has never been, whether or not Rambus's patents are valid. The issue is that they acted in bad faith, violated several signed agreeements, and are putting large portions of the IT industry at risk to preserve their own sorry asses.
So yes.. it's a different case.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
This slashdot story is written rather poorly.
You're new here, right?
I have no real problem with RAMBUS enforcing their patent, as long as it's clear that they are doing so fully legally.
The primary issues (that I'm aware of) are that RAMBUS is accused of essentially hiding the existence of the patent during the JEDEC collaboration and whether what Infineon has done actually constitutes infringement.
The current ruling seems to indicate that there was no fraud involved in patenting during the JEDEC proceedings, but even that doesn't necessarily free RAMBUS from the onus of proving infringement. Whether the patent itself was initiated fraudulently or not, there is still a clause in patent law that they cannot sit on the patent and enforce it at a later date.
In addition, it would also have to be demonstrated that Infineon (among other potentials) were aware that the technology involved was indeed patented at the time the implemented it. There is a substantial legal difference between willful and incidental infringement. And if it is true that RAMBUS stayed mum about the existence of their patent, it's pretty clear that any infringement that may have occured before knowledge of the patents existence would definitely be non-willful.
I'm certainly not up on all aspects of this case, and there are most likely facts and items that I have no knowledge of, but the general perception is that RAMBUS is using ambush tactics as a profit mechanism.
I have no problems with the concept of patents, and I have no problem with those who hold valid patents, but I do have a problem with patents being used for ambush tactics and the like. Likewise, if Infineon really did willfully infringe, I have no problem with them being brought to task for it.
Obviously, there will be more to come in this saga, so it'll be interesting to see where the dust settles.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
You just add clauses to the contract which, in this case, demand that RAMBUS has to state truthfully that they don't own any patents to the technology shared with JEDEC, and a subclause, that if they do or claim in the future, the patent rights will be transferred to JEDEC in case RAMBUS wants to claim IP (using a patent they shouldn't rightfully have, according to the above hypothetical clauses...)
IANAL, but something like that.
I can't really say. So far, my PA-RISC workstations's performance has not been impacted by this ruling. Further reports as events warrent...
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.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Actually, the SDRAM royalties it has sought are thought to be closer to 0.75%. It was on DDR-SDRAM, which Rambus considered to be a would-be competitor to its own Direct Rambus RDRAM, that Rambus sought a royalty of 3.5%. See this story from Electronic Buyers News in 2001 concerning statements made in the trial.
Surely this whole case represents incompetency of the standards body & their lawyers. Are patents discoverable? Is this not part of due diligence? I would expect more than a quick question in determining these things. I expect that proper checks are made and binding agreements reached before progressing. It sounds like RAMBUS did the wrong thing...but why were they allowed to get away with it. They should have been caught way back and these issues sorted out. To stand up in court and plead both ignorance and trust as a case will never work.
Why is RDRAM a bad thing for computer users? I think promoting better technology is a good thing for users. If people promoted the better technology instead of the cheaper one, companies couldn't dump their obsolete products on the market in order to decrease sales of the better technology. If people bought a product based on its quality, we would have things like organic LED displays instead of truly obsolete LCD screens and CRT monitors.
I don't know where to stand on the issue of who had prior art, but I have talked to people on both sides and they seem to both have valid arguments. I don't believe any of the companies involved are boyscouts. What I am interseted in is which is the better technology. Obviously, if you look at the specs of Rambus, you will see that although DDR 266 is just a lower stepping of PC133 Ram and the bus is double-pumped. Rambus, on the other hand, has a lot more going for it. Its bus has less traces and allows you to more easily have more than one channel. It is also capable of shutting off portions of itself not in use.
If you look at a Tom's Hardware article It mentions that there is a limitation with using parallel designs due to uncontrolled impedence.
Not to mention that memory benchmarks available on many sites show that DDR can't continiously maintian its bandwidth like Rambus can. Instead, its bandwidth is spurty.
Also, Rambus has many new things on the backburner.
Rambus memory has also become much cheaper. I believe in leaving the decision of whether or not
Rambus infringed on patents to the courts and going for what is the best technology so you can give it a boost. What holds back RDRAM in terms of price is that there isn't enough being sold.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
Such prose by a
Does anyone grow weary of the uninformed bashing? The story is about these two paragraphs
No actual change of verdict on the rambus case, mainly a proceedural flaw. Where in this story is anything that justifies your comment about Rambus and Bush? Most of us eagerly await your evolution into a real human being.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I didn't read the full decision of the court (and I probably wouldn't understand much of it if I did...I speak Perl, not legalese) but something seems wrong when a 3-judge federal circuit court can overturn the ruling of a jury with language like that. I mean, if the administration of the case was mis-handled or the judge screwed up...I could perhaps understand. Maybe someone more familiar or more enlightened could explain this further.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
> 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.
You have to wait for the second posting of this news, at least. Just be a little patient.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The really strange thing (to me) is that back when I first met ChrisD (back when he was involved with SVLUG), he was as intelligent and insightful as the next fellow. Now he joins the /. editorial staff, and he suddenly seems to have lost the ability to read or comprehend. Is it possible that working as a slashdot editor can actually cause physical brain damage? :)
Indeed, the jury is still out (as it were) on Rambus. They have won a decision, but not the case. The case is going back to the lower court.
Maybe if we would have slowed the pace, not tried to jump start the PC industry with clock speed wars and bus bandwidth statistics, and as an industry concentrated on elegant solutions, innovative design and bringing something truly new to the consumer the market for PCs and software would not have stagnated so brutally? It's more than obvious that the current approach failed.
The massive interest in the first wave of iMacs proves that consumers are hungry for something new, but marketing clockspeed and Apple's insane need to keep prices high killed that movement. Maybe a glimmer of hope from Small Form Factor or Mini-ITX (which I sit and type from at the moment)?
What the hell does this have to do with Rambus? Rambus is part of the brute force/clockspeed eccentric computing industry. They have zero interest in the customer or industry partners, just in money (I know, I'm a capitalist pig at heart too, but there's more to it then that). When their product doesn't sell, they sue their partners, partners gained under false pretense.
So would the industry be better off if we were just getting to 2gHz? If DDR was just taking off in the market place? If Microsoft concentrated on fixing Windows 95 instead of pushing out incremental upgrades every 18-24 months? Would processor upgrades feel really substantial if the architecture were more elegant and devs more concious of performance? If Linux devs stopped trying to emulate the Windows desktop and feature creep and tried to break away from the desktop metaphor? Would it be a better industry (and would the consumer still be interested) if Apple had 30% market share and users really had alternatives?
Yes, the market would be more fragmented and support would be more challenging. Yes, 3gHz is cool, but who needs it? Yes, XP is better than 95, but could we have gotten there in 2 upgrades instead of 5, and caught the security holes along the way. How cool would the Linux desktop be if KDE was built from the ground up not to be like Windows (flame retardent boxers activate!)?
We would certainly have fewer 800lb gorillas, and a more interesting landscape. I think so...
The decision was by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. It is a special federal appeals court that hears patent cases and special federal issues such as takings, veterans affairs, and federal contract disputes.
The outcome is surprising on its facts, as the documentation shows that Infineon had actual intent to deceive other members of the memory industry.
However, the Federal Circuit now has a twenty year history of ignoring the law and creating its own jurisprudence in favor of strong patent rights. In the process, economic efficiency, fairness, and consumer protection have been lost.
Although the court is limited to patents, it frequently rewrites antitrust law to exclude liability for patent misuse. It frequently revises claim constructions on an ad-hoc, nonsensical basis that is impossible to predict, often ignoring the patent itself, and almost always in favor of the patent holder.
It has made invalidity harder to prove, requiring printed documentation of all elements of a claimed invention, and has limited obviousness to a very narrow set of circumstances where documents actually state that a patented combination is in the prior art. This is somewhat of an oversimplification, but it is unfortunately almnost accurate.
It has expanded the realm of patents to include business methods (harming free enterprise by making the mere right to enter an industry subject to patent rights), genomes (which, while they already exist, are always useful for growing hair--by using this claim they can cover all uses for the genome), and algorithms.
It frequently ignores federal procedural law, and has been reversed a few times by the supreme court on these grounds in recent years.
While many on slashdot frequently cite the "Microsoft Patents 1 and 0" story from the Onion, the Federal Circuit has actually gone that far in real life. In a patent case brought by Excel Corp., the Federal Circuit affirmed the validity of a patent over a one bit flag used to determine whether two parties on a phone were using the same phone provider.
Yes, Excel has a patent on a one bit flag (ones and zeros) when applied to phone networks!
There is much more to say about this, but that is for another day.
From what I can tell, Philips is one of the "good guys". Well, as much as a corporation can be a "good guy". At least I personally haven't heard of them doing anything outright evil. Also, Philips is not like the companies we're used to dealing with in North America. Being based in northern Europe seems to give them a bit of a more pragmatic outlook on things, IMHO.
You! Yes, you.
... what is that you might ask?
Time to learn about Docterine of Lasches
Well, its illegal to sit on a patent that you own, and purposely delay patent litigation for your own financial gain. If you didn't know about the infringement, then its fine. Not every company can act as a world-wide watchdog for patent infringers. But if you knew somebody was using your patent, and you held off on enforcing it for your own financial gain, there are precendents that make this illegal.
Link and learn
"Old man yells at systemd"
er, I'll learn to link, first .. but herer it is
"Old man yells at systemd"
RAMBUS had pending patents on this technology. The standards commiteee required disclosure of issued patents, but did not require disclosure of pending patents.
I was working as a videographer when Rambus went after Infineon in the 4th circuit court (Richmond, VA). I sat in on a LOT of depositions, both from Rambus witnesses, and from Infineon witnesses. I have to say the Rambus lawyers were always polite and wonderful to work with. The Infineon lawyers were always blowhards and bastards. If a Rambus lawyer had to delay a deposition, s/he would make sure the clerk and I were notified as soon as possible and, if we were already on site, would make sure we could get a meal if the delay would make us miss lunch or dinner. The Infineon lawyers went beyond ignoring us to being just downright rude.
I have to say, compared to the legal issues, this is neither here nor there. I just found it interesting.
On the other hand, after listening to deposition after deposition, I heard more than I'll ever want to know about JEDEC, Rambus, and anything related. Even to me, who works with computers but hasn't brushed up on electronics in years, it was clear, after several weeks, Rambus was hanging onto a thin thread and was basically bluffing.
I remember one lawyer going on and on with an expert witness. He kept asking if a flip-flop was switch and if it could be considered memory. The lawyer kept badgering him for a yes or no answer. It got even more fun when the witness finally asked if he was talking about an RS or JK flip-flop. It was clear, at least to me (and I'm sure to the witness) that this lawyer had not even read the most basic info on electronics and memory.
"Suits at common law" does indeed refer to civil suits, but only those "at law."
The more significant exception is the word "preserved": you are entitled to a jury trial only in those cases for which the common law provided one at the time the amendment was adopted. This makes the analysis of "at common law" extraneous, because only the law courts provided for trials by jury: the equity and ecclesiastical courts provided trials only by (their equivalents of) judges. (Equity courts heard, among other things, cases involving remedies other than money damages; Delaware still has a separate "chancery" court. The ecclesiastical courts heard divorce actions, and other stuff no longer relevant.)
The seminal recent case interpreting the amendment is, in fact, from a few years ago on patent law. The trouble was, of course, that patent law in its present form did not exist in 1790, but the Supreme Court found the issue of infringement close enough to cases handled in law courts then. Thus, either the plaintiff or defendant may demand a jury trial.
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