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Rambus Could Reap Millions In Patent Settlements
RedEaredSlider writes "Rambus, a designer of semiconductor chips, won a long-running patent battle with NVIDIA, but that dispute is not the only one the company is involved in — and the upcoming decisions could mean millions in additional revenue. Besides the NVIDIA decision, Rambus is involved in a suit with Hynix Semiconductor that will be heard in October. In that case, Hynix had originally sued Rambus in 2000, but Rambus counter-sued. Hynix lost, and appealed. The parties will appear before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in October. A judgment in Rambus's favor would be worth at least $397 million, according to the company's general counsel, Tom Lavelle."
How many parallel predicting octopuses were required to predict their victory?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
No. NO. Rambus is an IP troll, at best they specify how chips talk to each other on a motherboard. Smarter people then design chips.
ATI is going to want to get sued in about six months for $500 million.
Wow, there's a company I haven't heard of in years. Didn't they make some hideously expensive RAM that was supposed to perform twice as well as normal RAM, but never lived up to the hype? Basically, they patented the design, couldn't get it to work right, and now they're suing the companies who did.
Ah! I see you have joined me in redundancy by hitting the /. high speed publishing trap.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
what algorithm were they using? And how were they load balancing? You'd almost have to be doing a bucket sort initially? And there was no detail whatsoever as to the data being sorted. Were they just a crapton of 64 bit words, sentences, database records, what was the data being sorted? I can sort a petabyte in O(1) time if it consists of two records each 1/2pb in size. None of what they've said means anything without getting into the context.
Oh, sorry ... this is abuse. Argument is down the hall.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Although their chances are better than SCO's (debatable, but I'd give it to them), this story sounds as rosy as an SCO fanboy writing their weekly column.
"could mean millions" Could. Could.
I really wish we had a news service that posted honest stories.
Rambus has sued the world, and finally one of them stuck. nVidia is the loser this time. If only Rambus would die, then we could all move on in life.
See how much nicer that would be! ;)
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
Where do I go for sexual harassment. I'm not getting any,
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
How do you think they have lasted 10 years beyond any product they have actually manufactured??
Their only business in the last decade has been patent trolling... and business has been good.
Because crime doesn't pay, but exploiting flawed laws pays big time!
Seriously, won't this company please just shrivel up and die, or maybe get eaten alive by rats? Please?
They've been patent extortionists and complete asshats since the 1990s. It's not that the RAM industry has ever been very clean or exactly has any good guys -- can you say rampant antitrust violations? -- but Rambus sits in a special place in my heart for attempting to hold much of the computer hardware industry hostage for, well, more than a decade now. The depth of the slime that RAM companies routinely wade in to makes me wonder why in the Hell they all don't get together and make a coordinated effort to crush and blackball Rambus? It seems as though it would make the world a better place, and they'd probably enjoy doing it since they seem to be in to that sort of thing. Should Rambus implode or otherwise be scraped from the face of computing forever, no one but Rambus executives and lawyers will be sad. Of course by now it may be too late: even the whiff of a litigation windfall, never mind an actual court victory, can keep a horde of lawyers going for an awful long time. It's depressing.
Rambus is to computing what Goldman Sachs is to finance. Calling them leeches gives leeches a bad name.
Reporting possible settlements as stated by the complainant's GC is like buying a diamond ring from a jewelry store at the sticker price. It's going to be a horribly, horribly overblown number way above reason and logic, because their goal is to squeeze every penny out of you. It's just like buying a car - only chumps pay the sticker price.
Even if Rambus can prove every single violation, there's a great deal of doubt in my mind that the judge will actually award them what they think it's worth.
No he doesn't, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk - and as an added bonus you get a very nice piece of thinking man's crumpet as well.
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
Rambus is one company that needs to be nuked from orbit while all of their lawyers and officers are locked in the building.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I can't help but wonder, eventually these sorts of lawsuits go from the cost of business to personal between CEOs. Since CEOs invest so much time and energy in winning these personal buisness battles, why don't they simply box it out in the ring, and sell tickets? Both companies effectively have unlimited funds for the ensuing 5-10 year legal battle, and ultimately it's really a 50/50 coin flip as to who owes who how much money when the verdict comes down from upon high. Just cut to the chase and let's see some CEOs bust some chops and knock heads in a bare knuckle boxing match instead of hiding behind overpriced lawyers.
moox. for a new generation.
RAMBUS are patent trolls.... WHO KNEW? maybe someone should have tried to slap them harder after their last debacle
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
When you are convicted of collusion, never mind all the companies that get away with it all the time, but if we convict someone of collusion it should not be just a slap on the wrist.
I could go on but there is a lot of issues here and the US has a lot of law on the books that favor corporate 'individuals' over their actual citizenry. I keep going back to that Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I don't know about you guys, but when I was in school a million years ago, representing someone else's work as your own was grounds for immediate failure of the course and very possibly removal from the program.
I'm assuming now, with the past decade or more of patent trolling, that this is no longer the case in business schools, and representing someone else's work as your own is now encouraged and actually preferred by the staff and faculty to actually producing your own results. right?
I mean, they're supposed to be teaching you how things actually work, right?
Not quite... It was more like the council had a non-disclosure agreement, and Rambus showed them what they were working on, after which a couple of the other manufacturers turned around and blatantly copied the inventions. Unfortunately for them, the patents in question had been filed long before.
Which is why Rambus has been awarded compensation in several judgments.
While Rambus certainly has bad sides and skeletons in the closet (they're a corporation after all), it's not correct to call them a patent troll.
And their RDRAM failed for two major reasons: Price and Samsung
The price was MUCH higher, especially for 32-bit RDRAM. Yes, it was faster, but the benefits were not that high. Add that Samsung, the sole producer of 32-bit RDRAM, couldn't deliver in a timely manner, and the customers had a choice between buying a more expensive RDRAM motherboard with very expensive RDRAM that they would have to wait weeks for, or a marginally slower DDR motherboard with very cheap RAM that they could get straight away. Still, RDRAM found its way into many servers.
But RDRAM existed, and it was faster (if comparing apples to apples) -- it wasn't a patent troll, but patented technology they had actually made into products.
People (even here) were slamming Rambus because they wanted cheap, and if Rambus won, DDR2 prices were likely to go way up.
Wait wait wait? What did the Minnesota Timberwolves head coach do again? and why is he going to reap millions?
Where do I go for sexual harassment. I'm not getting any,
Prison.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I remember being on forums years ago when Rambus initially started its "Troll the World" tour. For some reason there were a lot of people who felt it necessary to tirelessly defend this company. They had an extraordinarily difficult time following logic and reason, and for some reason defended Rambus like it was their buddy in a bar fight. I thought they must have fallen into three categories. First, they are Rambus-paid trolls, which I kind of doubted there were many of, since there are so many stupid people that will do this work for free. Such as the second type, which have the typical "defend your shitty purchase" mentality. Third, they are just annoying fucks who like being contrarian for the sake of it. So, basically trolls.
Where are all of them now? Where are all of the valiant RAMBUS DEFENDERS (TM) to correct the injustice of this company having bad things said about it? Maybe everyone who feels embarrassed about their shitty Rambus purchases finally got over it.
For the N64 but they didn't use it for the Gamecube or Wii. (Not sure what the DS or PSP use.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
A judgment in Rambus's favor would be worth at least $397 million, according to the company's general counsel, ...
Sounds like just enough to pay the attorneys ...
Where do I go for sexual harassment. I'm not getting any,
Prison.
Being modded +5 Informative for that is damn near as funny as your comment.