Rambus Patent Claims Dismissed
Gogo Dodo writes "The patent infringement claim by Rambus, the SCO of the chip world, against Infineon have been dismissed by a judge in Virginia due to Rambus destroying documents relating to the lawsuit." Of course, Rambus is already planning an appeal, so this may not be over just yet.
I think after Enron and Arthur Andersen, if you touched the documents you're gone.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
It is about damn time that Rambus got punished for this. They have been deceiving the court since the beginning. They also lied about pending patents. They should have all of their patents (even the ones unrelated to this case) revoked as punishment for their abuse of the patent system.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
yeah, they shred documents only when litligation is brought about...but it's all just coincidence. so none of it should be taken into consideration.
well well, rambus is so not square?
Chip's Ahoy !!
Rambus faces a patent infringement suite from SCO for using their business model and becoming the "SCO(tm) of the chip world"
I, for one, think it's about time the slash overlords created a Legal section. This really doesn't have anything to do with online rights. Similar to the Politics section, a Legal section would hold stories like these, SCO's machinations, and any other article where it's two companies duking it out in court and where my rights aren't affected.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
You would think that when a company destroys evidence they lose the right to appeal. These are the times in which we live.
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
To be fair, it's really an unfair comparison.
SCO is a IP litigation company which purchased a company with many valuable copyrights (IE: Code) to sue others into oblivion.
Rambus is a technically adept company with many valuable patented technologies, which squandered what advantages they had by trying to lock everybody into their tech and sueing anybody who competed...
I think that consumers who own systems with rambus rimms should file a class action suit for damages incurred due to non-upgradability.. I have a buddy with Dell Systems stuck with 128 mb of ram 'cuz local vendors (dell included) no longer ship rimms...
Sue the Fockers...
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
512MB R-DRAM RIMM - $120
Legal fees to enforce your patent - $350000
Being left out in the cold and compared to SCO - Priceless.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Man, I really hope they win the appeal. I'd hate to see them lose their ability to innovate.
Come on, Nobody hates Rambus that much.
It's about time. The courts need to begin to seriously sanction deceiptful and fraudulent behavior, otherwise, Chaos. This is a minimal sanction. Surely the judge recognized the previous fraud conviction, tossed but..., as well as clear document destruction makes this a no brainer. At all levels - Court of Appeals, Supremes, GWB, Congress - I think Rambus' credibility is SCO'd. Busted Rambus! Stick to your own inventions next time please.
he thinks people who constantly complain about dupes are dumb.
Oh really?
I think dupes, especially ones posted within the space of a day, are an indication that the editors are not even reading their own site. There have been numerous recent examples of editors failing to check for working links and at least ensuring a hint of accuracy in submission text, along with proper attribution, before posting. If they're going to take the time to post something on a page viewed by millions, they can take a few extra minutes to make sure it isn't crap, or posted two hours earlier and three items down the page. Otherwise, wtf are they doing all day?
Really, if the editors/authors can't live up to their self-granted titles, and can't give the viewing community--which is helping pay for the site either through ad views or subscriptions--a greater degree of oversight that they won't do themselves, I see no reason to ever subscribe. As it is, I'm pretty close to mapping slashdot.org to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file and staying away for a while.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Rambus basically sat in on industry meetings, then pre-emptively patented the technologies which were under proposal. Their methods were no more than extortion toward companies which implemented the (supposedly open) standards the industry had agreed upon. As far as I know Rambus doesn't actually employ many (any?) engineers, they are primarily in business to make money from "intellectual property."
I'd be scared if I was the judge...Oh wait sorry Rambus not Rambo's. Silly me.
This post patent pending.
I have to post anonymously, because I actually KNOW something about this. I was a Rambus licensee, and did a Rambus-based design. I have been to Rambus headquarters. I also know people who were at the JEDEC meetings at the time in question.
IMHO, your first two sentences are absolutely true. The third is/was false.
At the time I dealt with Rambus, they had competent engineers and really did have some decent IP. When I was there, I saw a 50-50 mix of engineers and managers, but on my way through the building saw a decent number of CAD-equipped cubicles.
IMHO, all the litigation is based on what WAS a decent patent application. They just extended it and drew claims on it that they had no business doing.
Caldera was previously best known for buying Novell/Digital Research's anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft for the numerous abuses Microsoft made against DRDOS. Once Caldera won that one, they spun off what was left of the DRDOS development team in the form of Lineo.
It's fair to say they are, for the most part, an IP litigation company. They've had some good people (good in the sense of not evil) people running them for the times they've been Caldera + Some Company With Something Real For Sale, but they keep returning to a theme, spinning off the companies that do the real work and keeping the lawsuit material.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It is pretty much standard practice in high-profile cases, which is why you notice them all the time. However, crimes such as speeding and rarely appealed. But then again, they don't end up on the front page of slashdot either.
I think Rambus has the prior art.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.