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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."
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.
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.
Yeah. Rambus has a lot in common with SCO ... parasitic beasts at best.
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.
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.
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.
Naming the character alignment for r/l entities sounds like a fun nerd-game.
I claim that the pirate-bay guys are Chaotic Neutral!
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!?
You joke, but it's exactly true. If you commit a crime, you only have your own resources and power to carry it out. But if you get the state to do the work for you, then you have virtually unlimited power. The more you can have laws made which restrict the free market, the more power you have against the other guy (sure, the other guy might be able to wield said power, but if you got the laws made the right way, you will have better control of their power).
Nope, sorry, they are patent trolls. If you read the history of their involvement with JEDEC, they basically fucked EVERYBODY, including us consumers, by sitting in on the SDRAM meetings and secretly patenting everything that wasn't nailed down.
So while they may have invented a few cool things their actions at JEDEC were total patent trolling and any patents that arose from those meetings seriously needs to get tossed out. Instead what will happen is you Mr Anon Coward, Me, and everybody else will pay more for memory of ANY kind, be it for motherboards, GPUs, or frankly just about anything using modern memory tech, because those trolls were allowed to steal everything that wasn't nailed down. So unless some completely new memory tech comes down the pipe (and even then as broad as the patents are you might nor even escape then) we will ALL be paying a "RAMBUS tax" on anything that has memory for the next 20+ years. What we need is a company like IBM or Google to come along and buy them out and offer their patents with RAND pricing, instead of allowing these trolls to continue to exist.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Other companies than Samsung tried to manufacture RDRAM and failed even more, because of poor quality control. The fact is the design was complex, and hard to manufacture, leading to all sorts of issues, including localized heat zones. If you remember, RDRAM was when we started seeing heat spreaders in memory modules.
Sending a signal on both edges of the clock has been done since like forever. I learned it in class before Rambus was even founded. If DDR infringes on a patent because of that, the patent office needs to review its standards for accepting patent applications.