DRAM Price Fixing Investigations

An anonymous reader writes "A few days ago after FTC antitrust charges against Rambus were thrown out, the U.S. Department of Justice and EU have both begun probes against the 4 largest memory makers in accusation of price fixing during 2001/2002. News.com.com has information regarding the pending EU investigation. Anandtech and Silcon.com both have primers on the U.S. investigation. If you thought you paid too much for RAM in 2002, chances are you may have been more right than you originally thought."

Comments

I need some clarification...

[numbski]

I don't like paying high prices any more than anyone else, however I have to wonder...

Let's say I have a monopoly on widgets, or myself and my compeptitors agree to keep the price of widgets artificially high.

At what point are we no longer allowed to sell our widgets at whatever price we see fit? When do we cross over into breaking the law for price fixing?

Uhh...no

[Pingular]

If you thought you paid too much for RAM in 2002
I paid 70 for a stick of 512mb in 2002. That may be expensive compared to now, but with my first 486 I paid the same price for a 4mb stick. Unless you own a server farm, what's 10 per half a gig or ram?

Price fixing lawsuits are hard to try.....

[ghettoboy22]

Saving my mod points....

While I'm willing to give any company the benefit of the doubt, it does seem rather suspicious that Micron chose to sell off their PC arm and focus instead on, the implied, more lucrative memory manufacturing business line. Circumstantial yes, but it never made sense why Micron would sell of a business line that was the only good alternative to Dell.

That being said, it's really hard for the DoJ to prove a conspiracy existed to fix prices of memory between manufactures. IANAL, however from my understanding basically a "smoking gun" would be the only way a conviction could be had - some emails between companies discussing price or marketing strategies perhaps. Other than that, it's almost impossible to get a price-fixing case with a favorable outcome for the prosecution.

Toner and Ink

[nycsubway]

I'd like to see the price of toner and ink cartridges go down. Those things seem so simple, I wonder why they are so expensive. A memory chip seems slightly more expensive to produce than an ink cartridge. Yet the prices are very similar.

Market fixes itself in this case

[Brahmastra]

In April 2002, Michael Dell said that his company, PC maker Dell, began to buy memory from second-tier manufacturers to avoid cartel-like behavior of some memory makers. Why is price fixing by a few manufacturers a concern when alternate vendors are available? It's a problem only if the price fixers are the only vendors. The market is fixing itself. If Dell buys from the 2nd tier vendors, the price fixers have to ultimately lower their prices.

Too Bad About Rambus

[stevesliva]

I thought the FTC complaint against Rambus would have set a great precident. Basically Rambus participated in standards development for DRAM technology and ensured that the standards would include technology infringing on Rambus patents without disclosing those patents. Rambus then withdrew and began suing every DRAM maker in sight.

SCO is doing just about the same thing as Rambus, but with much less success. Participate in Linux/UNIX standards groups, but later claim to own those standards and begin suing everyone.