Slashdot Mirror
BusinessWeek Examines the Rambus Legal Saga
An anonymous reader writes "Now that three companies have admitted to colluding to fix DRAM prices in what has turned out to be a global conspiracy BusinessWeek takes a look at the why. The most recent to admit guilt was Samsung and no one, as yet, knows precisely why they did it. The short answer seems to be because they didn't want Rambus' memory technology, DR-DRAM to succeed in the market. The more complicated answer is that now that Samsung, Infineon and Hynix have all admitted to fixing prices, they're now lawsuits from Rambus alleging that their motivation was to "kill Rambus" by making it too expensive for it to be attractive for PC manufacturers. Today in San Francisco, lawyers for Rambus are going to argue for the release of a set of documents currently under seal, that they think could go a long way toward proving their case. If nothing else, the timing of the price-fixing, which ran from 1999 to mid-2002 is suspicious, because that was about the same time that the DRAM companies would have been resisting pressure to adopt Rambus."
Rambus has taken a lot of heat for allegedly inserting their IP-protected technology into the JEDEC process and has suffered under that yoke for years. Now it comes out that the companies wailing the hardest were actually out to destroy the "pure IP" company.
I think that in this case there really isn't any good guy because all the parties involved are apparently bad guys.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Price fixing sucks. But this is Rambus we're talking about. Remeber RDRAM? Remember Rambus trying to hold JEDEC (and DRAM manufacturers) hostage through patent claims on DDR?
The lawyers of course!... "A quarter of a billion dollars in legal fees"?.. and that's from the Rambus side alone. Obscene. Imagine if that money was invested in R&D, instead of this pathetic sleazy game of vile deceit?.
The problem is, when people go about protecting themselves (or attacking) bad people (or companies) in an illegal way, they deserve the full weight of the law brought against them.
Society follows a collection of rules in order to survive. Together these rules are called the law. When people break the rules, then they harm all of society.
Just think, had they not done this, while Rambus may have survived, they would have been able to have a better case in which to fight against Rambus's practices, and work towards changing, if not abolishing patent laws. As it is, they're illegal practices will now be used to protect Rambus against the law.
So Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat harmed all of society?
PS: no, I don't think the two cases are comparable - I'm just pointing out the dangers of generalisations.