FTC Dismisses Complaint Against Rambus

swordboy writes "A federal judge just threw out the FTC lawsuit against Rambus. This has been discussed at length here before but this changes the landscape yet again. An interesting, possibly coincidental item is that Intel just today announced a new and very powerful DRAM interface that bypasses Rambus IP altogether."

Comments

Woo

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, the question is, does this offer the same price-point as DDR?

I mean, DDR-II has a significant price-premium over current DDR, but if it doesn't....

Woo. It might be worth going Intel for once :)

Time is of the essence

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Intel just today announced a new and very powerful DRAM interface that bypasses Rambus IP altogether.

Unfortunately, most court disputes between hi-tech companies finish long after the technologies in question are dead. Just look at Lineo/Canopy : when they won the DRDOS settlement against Microsoft, Windows 95 and DOS were already just a painful reminder of the past.

So yes, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Intel can do without the Rambus IP. However, I doubt it's the real reason, because even when the disputed technologies are obsolete when the court reaches its verdict (or the parties settle), the money from damages or settlement is very real.

Re:Time is of the essence

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Unfortunately, law and technology are completely different realms. The law realm tries its damndest to be exacting which costs expedience, and the technology realm tries its damndest to be fast.

Rambus is a proof of what SCO can do

[Anonymous Coward]

Rambus story shows that, in US, anything is possible in courts, even if you screw people, even if you do nasty things, outrageously lie, etc... at the end you may get awarded in court.

That's why making fun of SCO doesn't make me laugh much, because there is a possibility that they can get what they want in the courts.

Re:This is an important decision

[El]

Hard drives fail and are slow as hell. And are several orders of magnitude less expensive per byte stored. Unless something happens to drastically alter the relative price of hard disks vs. RAM, I predict that you're blowing smoke.

Re:Both news items are exciting

[dameron]

Rambus, long an innovator in memory designs has been virtually sued to death by JEDEC members over their IP rights to the RDRAM designs.

I can't possibly imagine how you could have followed this case and come to that conclusion unless you've had blinders on and are deep into Rambus stock. Rambus deserves the title "Litigous Bastards" almost as much as SCO.

-dameron

Re:Both news items are exciting

[CaptBubba]

I don't think the companies would be so hostile if they had know ahead of time that they would be paying Rambus royalties. I think the issue was more that Rambus slipped their patented process into the design and then, when it was too late to remove it, they told everyone to pay up. I think the manufacturers were rightfully pissed off. This is with SDRAM (and by extension DDR) tech, not RDRAM, which everyone expects Rambus to charge for.

That said I think it is unsuprizing that Intel and the manufacturers would look somewhere else for the next generation of RAM technologies. They'd be foolish to deal with a companay that had tricked them before.

Re:RAMBUS is so dead

[Best ID Ever!]

Actually it's more like RAMBUS has *been* dead ever since DDR / DDR2 became competitive in terms of prices.

I think you mean RDRAM is dead. RAMBUS, the company, is still very much alive thanks to this ruling, which allows them to extort royalties for SDRAM.

Shouldn't the subject read...

[lauterm]

Shouldn't the subject read "FTC Complaint Against Rambus Dismmissed" instead of "FTC Dismisses Complaint Against Rambus". The title as it currently reads almost made me think the FTC wasn't all that bad. Then I read the body. Oh well, back to hating the FTC.