Rambus Wins Appeal of FTC Anti-Trust Ruling

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Rambus has won its appeal in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision said that it wasn't sufficient to prove that Rambus lied or harmed competitors; the FTC had to prove that it harmed consumers in order to fall under anti-trust law. This is, unfortunately, a very dangerous ruling in light of some of Microsoft's activities relating to OOXML because it raises the bar on the proof required to act against such behavior. However, the ruling in the Rambus case was merely vacated and remanded for further proceedings, not overturned. So, if the evidence warrants, the lower court might be able to decide that consumers were actually harmed by Rambus' conduct and rule against them. Alternatively, this ruling could be appealed to the Supreme Court by filing a petition for a writ of certiorari, but the Supreme Court only grants a few of those per year."

Comments

This isn't a bad ruling at all

[moderatorrater]

As long as the burden of proof to show harm to consumers isn't too high, this should be relatively simple. Explain to a judge how the PC market grew and evolved into one where all parts are interchangeable and show the benefit that's had to the consumer. Then show how the actions that rambus took fragmented the market artificially, resulted in artificially high prices from rambus and set back the ram industry overall.

The ooxml case is a little harder, especially since it's so early in the game that you can't see all the blowback yet, but considering the fact that even MS Office isn't compliant with the standard, it should be fairly simple to show that it's hurt the standards industry as a whole.

The biggest downside is that this ruling encourages lying and backstabbing between competitors trying to work together to build good standards.

Re:Hurting the Competition

[Frosty Piss]

Hurting competition in and of itself hurts consumers.

"Hurting" the competition is a part of Capitalism, which is by definition competitive. There is always a winner and a loser in Capitalism.

The burden of proof is a big deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

> As long as the burden of proof to show harm to consumers isn't too high, this should be relatively simple.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? Proving things like "harm to consumers" is VERY expensive and requires expert witnesses and studies to counter your opposition because it's so vague. Proving someone lied is a lot simpler and less expensive. Not to mention less of a matter of opinion.

As long as they can get away with lying to standards bodies to create or further a monopoly, though, I really don't like it. Suddenly, it changes the economic equation so that people can't challenge them unless it's too expensive not to. In other words, Microsoft may be able to use this as nearly a carte blanche to subvert standards bodies in its war on open standards.

Oh, I should also add an addendum to this story: it seems that this was decided by a three judge panel, so there's one more possibility for appeal, according to some Groklaw comments. They may be able to appeal and have all the judges decide. But this appeal might not be granted, either, so who knows? If any actual lawyer responds and tells us about the appeals route, listen to them, not me :) I'm only sure about the Supreme Court being able to overturn this ruling (if they deign to), and the lower court being able to hold Rambus accountable for other reasons.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Re:Hurting the Competition

[MozeeToby]

True, I guess what it comes down to is whether you are "hurting the compitition" or just "hurting competition"; as in the spirit of a fair and even playing field. In this case, Rambus was clearly trying to tilt the field in their favor.

that makes sense

[Speare]

I'm not 100% up on my late-1990s corporate dramas anymore, and maybe it's just a flippant or spurious kind of analogy to ponder, so set me straight where I've got this wrong:

Putting a file in a particular directory, so that other users might possibly request initiation of a download, is a criminal activity that can incur penalties of ~10000000% the cost of obtaining the original file legally. It doesn't matter if the file is actually downloaded. That's the "making available" charge.

But somehow, brazenly sharing ideas in memory technologies with all your competitors in the standards group, while maintaining a submarine patent, and then launching legal attacks on all those who built on the shared ideas, this is somehow okay because they hadn't proved that such a move had moved beyond the standards group and affected the marketplace? That's the "no harm to consumers" defense?

IANAL but...

[Philodoxx]

The decision said that it wasn't sufficient to prove that Rambus lied or harmed competitors; the FTC had to prove that it harmed consumers in order to fall under anti-trust law.

Isn't harming competitors harming customers? I mean less competition means more monopolies/duopolies, and that's never good for prices. I mean it's ok to screw over your competitor by offering a superior services/products and equal/better prices, but it's totally different to deceive a standards body so you can sue its members for patent infringement.