Decades-Old Rambus Litigation Against Micron For RDRAM Tech Reaches Settlement

An anonymous reader writes "The decades-old Rambus litigation against Micron for RDRAM tech finally reached a settlement. RDRAM tech has already been licensed by NVidia and Broadcom and has been used in game consoles such as the Nintendo 64. The preliminary deal is to last 7 years and net $280M for Rambus and Micro to gain access to patent licenses defining the technology."

Comments

Re:Now I feel old.

[t0qer]

Statute of limitations only applies to when a case can be filed. A trial can go on for years past the statute.

This is horrible news

[RelliK]

This is absolutely disgusting. Rambus is the ultimate patent troll. For those not familiar, here is some history.

Back in the 90's, Rambus became a member of JEDEC, an industry consortium of RAM manufacturers. JEDEC rules require members to disclose any patents that are relevant to the technology being discussed. Rambus didn't. It sat in on the meetings, listened, and modified its pending patent applications to cover DDR RAM. After the new RAM standard was adopted, Rambus surfaced its submarine patents and started suing everyone left and right.

Add to that the fact is that Rambus itself does not manufacture anything -- it's a technology licencing house that has a few engineers and an army of lawyers -- and you get a perfect example of a patent troll.

Re:This is horrible news

[RelliK]

Because US patent system effectively legalizes extortion. Some manufacturers rolled over and paid "licencing", but others, like Infineon decided to fight. The jury in Infineon v. Rambus ruled in favor of Infineon, but then Rambus appealed to the federal circuit and got that decision overturned. PJ, of groklaw fame, put it thusly: "federal circuit has never seen a patent it didn't like".

This is just a short summary, you can find more info if you like. Rambus extorted money from pretty much everyone who has so much as touched RAM.

Re:Now I feel old.

[icebike]

The Rambus debacle actually pre-dates Slashdot.
The patent cat fight started in 1990, and slashdot started in 1997. It was old news by the time it was first mentioned on Slashdot.

Re:Now I feel old.

[Solandri]

First off, it wasn't bogus - which is why micron lost. I'm no lover of RAMBUS but they absolutely had valid patents, and they did sell product. They lost the battle because their product was ultimately inferior and more expensive, but that doesn't change the fact the core technology behind DDR memory infringed on their ideas.

You're badly misunderstanding people's gripe with this whole thing. Of course the patents were valid. The whole point of the consortium was to come up with a non-patented standard, so when Rambus went behind everyone's back and patented the whole shebang of course there was no prior art. The other memory makers had gone out of their way not to patent it.

And FYI, JEDEC won against Rambus in their lawsuit - Rambus was guilty of patenting stuff which was being discussed in secret at JEDEC. The problem was Rambus was only guilty of violating the terms of membership for JEDEC. The lawyers who drafted the membership agreement neglected to put in any penalties for patenting stuff behind everyone else's back, and as a result the only recourse JEDEC had was to kick Rambus out. There were no federal or criminal charges because they didn't break government law, they broke JEDEC's rules. The patents were still valid though, even though Rambus effectively stole them, because the there was no prior art and the USPTO decided it was patent-worthy.

Speaking of which, do you really think DDR is worthy of a patent? Counting a clock tick not just when the voltage goes up, but also when the voltage goes down? That should be obvious to a 5-year old.