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Rambus Destroyed Evidence In Anti-trust Trial

Posted by timothy on from the oh-no-it-was-an-accident dept.

Marasmus writes "CNN is reporting that memory-chip maker Rambus has been found guilty of destroying evidence which was 'critical' to the anti-trust case brought by the U.S. government. Interestingly, the Judge has denied the FTC's request to move on to the penalty phase of the trial. Destruction of evidence in an anti-trust case normally yields a forfeiture of trial, but Rambus 'will have the burden of proving its innocence" instead.'

6 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why not penalty phase? by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Actually, this is a harsher penalty. They have to justify themselves in a public forum, no ifs, no ands, no buts.

    Do you know how hard it is to prove your innocence? Think about it - if someone accuses you of a crime you didn't commit, and you have to prove your innocence, can you? In most cases, not likely. That's why the usual standard in criminal cases is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".

    Of course, civil cases are different - then it's the "preponderance of the probabilities".

  2. Re:What's The Big Deal by gr8_phk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The only connection it has with "News For Nerds" is the fact that it is a Chip-Making company....

    And the fact that they went into JEDEC meetings to help define an open standard and then patented things being developed there. The RAMBUS saga is about abuse of the processes used to develop new standards. Rambus has yet to be properly dealt with for that, and that make an update on their case "News for Nerds" as much as anything.

  3. Re:Not much to the article... by gregbaker · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Not quite...

    Rambus says they legally destroyed the documents, a Judge says they illegally destroyed the documents. Rambus is useless.

    :-)

  4. Retention policies are determined by companies by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Each company determines it's retention policy, with advice from lawyers. These policies are intended to do many things. Two big ones are 1) reducing costs associated with storing old files and 2) limiting costs associated with litigation. While it is obvious companies want to hide guilt, there are other costs involved in litigation - e.g., the man-hours to search through old files, inventory them, copy them for other lawyers, etc.

    HOWEVER, regardless of a company's retention policy, it is illegal to destroy documents related to a government investigation once the company is aware an investigation will occur or is likely to occur. This is what got Arther Anderson in trouble, they knew an investigation was coming and then destroyed documents. This is also why a written policy is important, and that it be strictly observed. That way in court it is easy to defend the statement we destroy all documents older than X months automatically. We did not destroy them because an investigation was coming.

  5. How to read that pretty graph by steveha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article includes a graph that shows a steep drop-off of their stock price.

    The very first thing you do is to look at the numbers on the axes of the graph. The vertical axis of the graph is price of one stock share in dollars, but the graph goes from $15.43 down to $13.86, so that steep drop-off wasn't as steep as the graph makes it look. If you plot the same numbers on a graph that goes from $16 down to $0, it's not nearly as dramatic. The stock price fell by about 10.6%, while the graph makes it look more like 100%.

    To learn more about tricky graphs and other misleading charts, read How to Lie with Statistics, a truly great and fun book.

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  6. Shady... by riclewis · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Within the industry, Rambus has a rep for shady dealings, and this would appear to serve as another case in point. Anytime a company finds itself compared with Enron...

    It's seems obvious that they did wrong in adjusting their patents during and after the JEDEC process, without disclosing their patent knowledge or intents to the body at large. I can just hear the conversation: "Let's sit in on this standards body, write down their ideas, quielty patent them, wait for them to be implemented, hire lots of lawyers, and start suing everybody!!"

    If they had been (or are) allowed to get away with their behavior in regards to that standards body, it undermines the ability of all companies to cooperatively design and create standards in good faith.