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

A patent troll with a win streak?

[LostCluster]

This one's a tough call... the have been one of the most litigious of the tech companies, but on the other hand they seem to keep winning in the courts. Doesn't the definition of a patent troll include suing people with nonsense lawsuits? They seem to have come up with some ideas so critical to memory that everyone else in the industry can't seem to make a product without tripping over the patent law. Do we praise the inventors, or hate them because we hate patents?

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[jmv]

The term patent troll has nothing to do with the fact that a company wins or loses. It's used to describe a company whose sole (or main) source of income is patent litigation.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[bky1701]

When an idea is so critical to something it cannot be worked around, it is far too obvious to be deserving of a patent. As a problem gets bigger, the amount of ways to solve it grows proportionally. If memory makers can't get around them, there is no doubt in my mind they're nothing but patent trolling scum who deserve to be beaten down in court.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[LostCluster]

there is no doubt in my mind they're nothing but patent trolling scum who deserve to be beaten down in court.

But they haven't been... and are collecting their patent fees from Samsung who likely kept an eye on this case to see whether they needed to pay. So, do you hate all patents?

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[DrMrLordX]

RAMBUS, Inc. is the very definition of a patent troll. They're just smarter, and more brazen, than most. It will take years to undo the damage they did to JEDEC memory standards, and by then, who knows how else they will infect memory standards with their patents?

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"When an idea is so critical to something it cannot be worked around, it is far too obvious to be deserving of a patent."

So if I invent a Time Machine, and nobody else can find another way to travel through time so they use my design, then my solution was obvious and I am a patent troll for enforcing my patent?

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[introspekt.i]

I think the true Patent Troll is the company who neither innovates or manufactures (acts) on its patents. nVidia innovates with an intent to licenses, which I think most people can agree, doesn't really constitute patent troll behavior...they just want to concentrate on innovation.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one wish Intel didn't punk out on RAMBUS memory back when P4 came out.

That was the essence of the case last week.

Samsung, Hynix, and Micron got together and said "If we have to pay Rambus royalties on RDRAM, but not on SDRAM or DDR, let's make sure that SDRAM's a lot cheaper than RDRAM. Nobody'll buy RDRAM-based systems, and so what if Rambus sues us? They fucked us at the JEDEC standards were being written, but by the time the case is settled, they'll be bankrupt."

The DRAMurai gambled, and when Rambus was allowed to introduce the fact that Samsung executives had been jailed for that price-fixing, they realized they'd lost the gamble, which is why Samsung settled. Now that RMBS's army of lawyers is flush with a $900M war chest, it's in NVDA's best interest to settle.

A pox on all their houses. My only regret is that I didn't profit from it. (Fucking Samsung lawyer claimed he was "deathly ill" in late 2009, which delayed the trial to January, wiping the November call options to zero. Fucking Micron lawyer pulled the same stunt last week, which wiped out January's call options.)

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[timmarhy]

you don't seem to understand the difference between a patent and a chip design. not only that nvidia write the drivers and do the marketing. they PRODUCE something of value. rambus does not.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[Evil Shabazz]

A quick perusal of Rambus' patent portfolio does indicate their most recent patent was issued in 2008, which would indicate they are still attempting to innovate in their field. On the other hand, if they have certain patents that are so broad as to actually prohibit competition from entering the marketplace then the there is a very big problem with those patents. Patents are supposed to encourage corporations to invest in research and development by providing a measure of profit protection for the company doing that innovation. Stifling competition is counter to that intent.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[LostCluster]

Rambus is acting on their patents, they've got many licenses and are suing only those who want to use their patent-protected items without licensing. nVidia is just as protective of their designs... use one without paying and they'll sue too!

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[LostCluster]

Patents by definition stifle competition. They're saying "I figured out how to do something this way, and because I'm first you can't copy me!" It's a monopoly on that idea granted because if everybody could duplicate it right away, nobody would make money inventing.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[A12m0v]

Main source of income?
Rambus source of income is licensing their memory technology. The Sony PS3 uses XDR RAM designed by Rambus.
Hardly qualifies as a patent troll. They have every right to protect their IP.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[mcrbids]

They seem to have come up with some ideas so critical to memory that everyone else in the industry can't seem to make a product without tripping over the patent law. Do we praise the inventors, or hate them because we hate patents?

I guess you don't know/remember the real story behind RAMBUS. These "innovations" that they patented were obtained by attending multivendor conference meetings and then filing patents on the ideas discussed before anybody else got to them. They didn't come up with them, they just filed first!

But to make matters worse, they "submarined" the patents, filing changes for years so that nobody knew about the patents until AFTER the industry had pretty much committed itself to the designs that Rambus was eventually awarded patents to.

Rambus is a horrible patent troll, in the fullest sense of the word. In terms of evil, they are right up there with Antivirus vendors and spammers.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[thejynxed]

Only problem with that is, is that RAMBUS controls almost all of the DDR patents as well. They submarined the entire standard.

Re:A patent troll with a win streak?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Not true unless you destroy the time machines before the police get you for the torture."

You were supposed to figure out that I took mine with me when I left and destroyed the other one when it arrived and I tortured him to death in it, since I stated that they would need one to find me.

I'm not sure what made you think you need to explain to me about time when I invented a Time Machine and nobody else could do so. I'm not sure what in your twisted mind made you think you were actually smarter than me.

"so thanks for that, you human hater."

Get it straight. tomhudson is the human hater. He denied the entire human race, with the sole exception of me, a Time Machine just because he wanted to violate patents and prove it could be done. He is clearly anti-social, and some might even say pathological to the point where he has Borderline Personality Disorder. Luckily for you I tortuted him to death.

Just to clarify....

[John Hasler]

...The US Trade Commission is not a court.

Re:Just to clarify....

[Chris Burke]

Indeed. And Rambus has been losing all of their patent suits in court.

Though they have been winning all the suits involving anti-trust (both those filed against them, and those filed against the memory makers who did engage in illegal trust behavior).

Geek Logic

[westlake]

When an idea is so critical to something it cannot be worked around, it is far too obvious to be deserving of a patent.

That's nonsense.

If there is no work-around you have pretty much proven that the solution to the problem is not obvious and that the patent is legitimate.

Re:Geek Logic

[Chris Burke]

What they patented were ways to make fast memory, cheaper.

Nothing about Rambus' technology was every about "cheaper". Their memory technology was inherently more expensive than others because it required additional serialization logic chips.

It's pretty easy to say "Why didn't I think of that?" after the fact. It is the one who gets there first that gets the patent. That IS innovation.

You mean the one who gets to the patent office first? "Why didn't I think of that?" is what Rambus said when they overheard the discussions at JEDEC, but then they realized it didn't matter that they didn't think of it first, since nobody else thought of patenting it first. Yay Rambus?

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.

Re:Geek Logic

[the_other_chewey]

Take flight. There are two ways to do it - be lighter than air,

Airship.

or equal your weight with thrust.

Rocket.

Unless we find some way to modify gravity, that's it.

Right. Wouldn't it be awesome if it were somehow possible to use the dynamic properties of the medium
you move through to generate some sort of supporting force? That might even make it possible to create flying
machines with less thrust than their mass. Woohoo, let me patent that immediately!
Huh? What do you mean, airplanes?

Tard Logic

[Chris Burke]

In what universe is it true that there being only one known way to solve a particular problem means that one solution is not obvious?

In fact, when everyone who approaches the problem arrives at the same solution, that's usually proof that the solution is obvious.

Re:Tard Logic

[zippthorne]

What if everyone who approaches a problem doesn't arrive at a solution, and instead just uses the already known solution?

Re:Tard Logic

[Chris Burke]

That's different obviously.

But usually, if the solution isn't in textbooks, widely published research papers, or discussed at symposiums, but only dislosed via the patent then it isn't widely known. I mean, the patent lawyer at my company explicitly told my whole group not to do patent searches and just come up with solutions on our own, because patents are such a minefield the odds of you infringing one no matter what is very high, and knowingly doing so (which any kind of patent search, even if it didn't turn up the relevant one, could imply) is treble damages. Ergo most engineers are not working from the known-via-patent-disclosure solution, but coming up with it on their own. And if they're all coming up with the same one, then guess what? It was probably an obvious solution.

Re:Guaranteed to fail

[flydpnkrtn]

A car analogy! Sweet now I get it

Re:Guaranteed to fail

[fluffy99]

I didn't think I did. I think Slashdot is fucked up. If you open another topic and go back to the original thread, it seems replies might end up in the wrong thread.

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).

Memory technology company?

[Hurricane78]

I always thought, Rambus was a law firm with a straw business in memory technology.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

They *were* a legitimate technology company. Building their undisclosed patents into a JEDEC standard makes them a troll. Not starting litigation until well after the standard had become widely adopted makes them a super-troll.

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.

Bad faith

[nten]

Its not so much that it wasn't a good idea, but that they negotiated in bad faith. The background is that a group of many manufacturers got together to make a memory standard that they could all use. They each chipped in ideas, and didn't patent them. Rambus steered the standard towards something that would include things they had already patented, and hoped no one would notice the patents. No one did. They then did not immediately sue, but waited until the standard was widely used by many of the original group, and others, so that paying the settlements would be preferable to the cost of switching standards. This is not simply patent trolling per the usual standard. This is an example of fraud. The company should get dissolved to pay remunerations towards those it defrauded, all patents released into public domain, and its board charged with felonies.

Re:Not a troll

[Khyber]

Rambus PATENTED, but not invented.

They are trolls. Here is why. They took ideas from JEDEC standards conference. They then begin to patent those ideas without disclosing that to others involved in setting standards at that conference. They then wait for the technology to mature and become widespread, and they sue everyone. It's bullshit. They invented NOTHING, they stole forming standards, patented them, sat and waited, and sued.

Rambus has innovated and invented very little since the EARLY 90s.

They do not deserve the patent or the favorable rulings, for any legal or ethical reason.