Litigious Rambus Wins Again

After Rambus's settlement deal with Samsung earlier this week, an anonymous reader writes with this snippet: "Memory technology company Rambus rounded out the week with another legal dispute ending in its favor as it fights to defend its patent portfolio. On Friday [the] US International Trade Commission ruled that graphics chip maker Nvidia infringed upon Rambus patents, according to statements released by the two companies on Friday. Rambus has been filing lawsuits against various technology companies for the past decade, claiming they violate patents held by the memory chip designer."

Comments

Re:Not a troll

[Chris Burke]

They're kinda a troll and kinda not. They were awarded patents for their inventions... and they were awarded patents for what they overheard at JEDEC and then ran off and patented (and no one else did first because the whole point was to devise a patent-royalty-free standard).

Rambus vs. JEDEC

[azrider]

To all of you:

Before commenting (especially if you are defending Rambus) you might want to do a search on "rambus jedec spec". The google search is:
http://www.google.com/search?q=rambus+jedec+spec&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a/

One of the results is:
http://www.abanet.org/antitrust/committees/intell_property/june21.html/ (FTC Charges Rambus With Abuse of Standard Setting Process).

In a nutshell, Rambus participated in the standards setting process for SDRAM technology without informing any of the other members that they were actively pursuing patents in the technology used to implement the standard. Once the standard was finalized, they disclosed the patents and demanded royalties.

Methinks that Rambus was in the wrong. So does the FTC.

Re:Geek Logic

[slimjim8094]

What the hell kind of comment is that? Take flight. There are two ways to do it - be lighter than air, or equal your weight with thrust.

Unless we find some way to modify gravity, that's it. In that case, the "idea is so critical to [flight that] it cannot be worked around". You can easily make the case that simple physics will allow you to arrive at both solutions.