Samsung Settles With Rambus In Patent Dispute

Tackhead writes "After almost a decade of legal wrangling, Samsung has settled with Rambus over the antitrust case, regarding allegations of price-fixing for DDR and SDRAM memory, that was scheduled to proceed this month. (Here is a half-decade-old summary of the twists and turns of the case.) As part of the settlement, Samsung agrees to purchase $200M in Rambus stock, pays $200M in cash to Rambus, plus $25M per quarter for the next 5 years in licensing fees. No immediate word on the implications for Micron or Hynix."

Comments

Missing a detail

[girlintraining]

Hey, where's my check for having to pay for all of this crap in the form of higher memory prices? So we have some elephant mating going on between Samsung and Rambus -- that's cool and all, I'm sure it'll be great for... innovation... or... something, but if there is evidence of price fixing then why is the government not asking for the terms of the settlement as proof of conspiracy to defraud and prosecuting? This isn't "self-regulation" of the market -- this is "let's get out of here before mom gets home".

Rambus is still around??

[XanC]

How do we correct this error?

Really? A *Billion Dollars* for Rambus? Fuuuu!

[Dr. Spork]

If you add up Samsung's payout on this deal, it's damn close to a billion US Dollars. Wow, it took some time, but I guess that patent trolling paid off for Rambus after all. They'd never raise that kind of money the old-fashioned way, by making products that people willingly buy.

Re:Really? A *Billion Dollars* for Rambus? Fuuuu!

[NeutronCowboy]

Troll? Really? Someone from Rambus must have gotten mod points. As far as I can tell, Rambus just got one billion dollars from litigating a situation that arose because they sat on patents that they knew were going to be infringed by the new standards being developed. And they knew about the new standards being developed because they sat on the standards board. As for their products, they sucked. No one outside of stupidly rich people, or people with very specific needs who were willing to deal with the Rambus memory drawbacks, bought their crap.

To me, that's the definition of a patent troll: you failed in the market place because you sold an inferior product, but struck gold in litigation based on deceit.