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Supreme Court Sides With Rambus Over FTC
afabbro writes "The US Supreme Court rejected the FTC's bid to impose anti-trust penalties on Rambus. Without comment, they let stand an appeals court decision favoring Rambus. The FTC had found that Rambus undermined competition by getting secretly patented technology included in industry standards, but the Supremes evidently didn't agree."
So the Supremes didn't say "Stop [bundling secretly patented technology] in the Naaaame of Love"?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Not that anyone in this day and age learns from mistakes any longer -- following the economic crash, people are seeking to get back to "business as usual" failing to appreciate that "business as usual" is what caused the crash. (Interestingly, the great depression spawned all kinds of lessons and wisdom that carried for generations... it wasn't really until most of the great depression survivors died that this crash occurred.)
But I seem to be getting off-topic but not truly. The idea here is that RAMBUS got away with a very serious and ugly misdeed. They got away with it. Their reputation has been harmed but not enough that they would be shamed out of business. But industry standards people are well aware of what happened and I should hope that they will be able to prevent that sort of thing from happening ever again. They should include provisions that says things like "by providing your specifications or designs, you agree that any associated patents or other rights will be licensed to all users free of charge" or "by submitting this information for approval, you also agree that you are giving up any claims on intellectual property rights where this specification is used."
RAMBUS became instantly evil in the eyes of many with the news of their misdeed. Likewise, Microsoft became instantly evil in the eyes of those interested in ISO standards approval. These should all be counted as lessons learned. I don't think anyone uses RAMBUS RAM do they? There is good reason for it -- they priced it right out of use. Microsoft is another story...
I was really hoping Rambus would lose this case. This decision is a loss to everyone because it means that companies can now secretly get patented items into standards, which will really hinder the standards making process (which by the way, is a great benefit to the consumer). I hope everyone just refuses to do business with Rambus and let it go bankrupt.
The FTC argued in court papers filed in Washington that Rambus âoewaited to assert its patent interests until the new standards had been widely implemented.â The agency said Rambus then âoedemanded stiff royalties from makers of the great majority of computer memory chips.â
I thought this case was about Rambus filing patents for ideas that were brought up during the committee planning of the memory standard. That would mean that their patents are invalid, and that they essentially stole them. But that doesn't seem like what the FTC based their case on. The article makes it look like all Rambus did was wait to assert their patents, which is jerkass but perfectly legal.
Am I confusing this with another case?
If you don't know who RAMBUS is then you should, they have been a big name in computing technology for a lot longer than this RDRAM shit has been around. And if you can't use google then you don't deserve to Slashdot. And no, I'm not kidding this time. Every time someone cries about a well-known company not being detailed in a Slashdot summary, this site gets a little dumber.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The FTC had found that Rambus undermined competition by getting secretly patented technology included in industry standards, but the Supremes evidently didn't agree.
Actually, the Court's decision not to hear the case only implies that a majority of the judges did believed that there was a compelling reason to hear the case. Quoting from here:
The Court grants a petition for certiorari only for "compelling reasons," spelled out in the court's Rule 10. Such reasons include, without limitation:
Which of these reasons would have justified the Court to hear this case?
You can make a buck giving stuff away easily, Kevin. The trick is that the things you give away are complimentary to the things you make money on. Simple economics.
Take, for example, the Elphel cameras. All the software that runs on their cameras is under the GPL. They make money off the hardware--and they also make money off the fact that they don't really restrict their customers. You can pretty much do what you want with their cameras in terms of customizing it to your use--as long as you play by the terms of the GPL.
Standardization isn't good for innovators, perhaps. But the lack of it is very very bad for everyone else.
Most of the time, you're going to be everyone else.
Is that it will force asian companies to pay money to an american company.
So the Supreme Court might have just a little bias there...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
You act like everyone should be aware of a computer hardware manufacturer, so I hope you hold yourself to the same standard and are aware of all the big names in all the other fields covered by slashdot news.
Actually, I just know how to use google. If I don't know something I can look it up. I have lost count of the number of times I'm sitting in someone's living room and they say "I wonder blah blah blah" and I say "have you googled it" and they say "no" and the answer is on the first page. Fuck, that applies to about half the "ask slashdot" questions, if you can just come up with a decent set of search terms - 99% of the time you can pick them right out of the summary.
If not, you are a whiny hypocrite.
Slashdot needs a CAPTCHA which restricts posting to people who are able to pass a reading comprehension test. It would certainly have prevented you from proving to the world that you are a big idiot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I know the term Rambus but what is this Slashdot that you speak of?
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
You act like everyone should be aware of a computer hardware manufacturer, so I hope you hold yourself to the same standard and are aware of all the big names in all the other fields covered by slashdot news.
There are things that are other people's responsibility, and there are things that are your responsibility. Then there are the occasional things that aren't so clear whose responibility it is. But this falls into the, It's so fucking trivial, why are you making such a big fuss over nothing! category.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Rambus makes RAM.
Rambus essentially stole trade secrets / patented info and jury rigged them into various standards, thus making them no longer a secret and the patents unenforceable.
The people behind those secrets and patents got pissed and sued Rambus.
The lawyers have been slapping their cocks together for about 17 years, several of which have been in relation to this case.
There were decisions, there were appeals, and now the end of it is the Supreme Court ruling that lets Rambus get away free and clear.
Not quite. Under some circumstances, a US patent application can remain unpublished for up to eighteen months after filing. See here.
So it's possible for someone to file a patent application, then choose not to disclose the application for a period of time. I am not sure if this happened in the RAMBUS case - I am just pointing out that patent applications are not always immediately made public.
Really? I thought it was more like:
Rambus makes RAM.
Rambus has some patents on some RAM technology, and got this technology included into various standards - without telling anyone that they held the patents.
When everyone started making RAM to meet said standards, Rambus suddenly started asking for royalties on the patents that they hadn't mentioned earlier.
Everyone else got pissed off by this and got the FTC to agree that that's not cricket, but the courts apparently don't agree with the FTC.
The lawyers have been slapping their cocks together for about 17 years, several of which have been in relation to this case.
There were decisions, there were appeals, and now the end of it is the Supreme Court ruling that lets Rambus get away free and clear.
It's not exactly rocket surgery.
Because, apparently a lot of the design specs in DDR are patented by Rambus (and were part of the old Rambus ram, which is what made it so fast). Rambus was involved in the creation of said design specs, or at least the over-arching standards that led to DDR, and didn't tell anybody that they had patents on these things.
If this is the case, then anybody who has ever sold or will sell DDR ram owes Rambus cash money. This will cause the price of DDR to skyrocket (probably about the same as the old, now defunct Rambus memory), negatively impacting anybody who buys ram in the future.
If that sounds dirty to you, then your Scumbag Tactics Detector(tm) is working within normal operating limits. The FTC's detector is working as well, which is why they brought the suit. Unfortunately they used a weak, and frankly confusing, argument and that is what has been struck down.
The courts don't seem to be saying Rambus is right, they seem to be saying the FTC is a little dense.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller