Samsung Settles With Rambus In Patent Dispute 71
Tackhead writes "After almost a decade of legal wrangling, Samsung has settled with Rambus over the antitrust case, regarding allegations of price-fixing for DDR and SDRAM memory, that was scheduled to proceed this month. (Here is a half-decade-old summary of the twists and turns of the case.) As part of the settlement, Samsung agrees to purchase $200M in Rambus stock, pays $200M in cash to Rambus, plus $25M per quarter for the next 5 years in licensing fees. No immediate word on the implications for Micron or Hynix."
Re:Missing a detail (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at it another way.... Perhaps Samsung gets some access to the patents of Rambus. Don't forget Rambus was a serial memory protocol. Everything in the x86 architecture is going serial, be it USB or PCIe. It's simpler to manage for interference. It might lead to better memory technology and if Samsung isn't being a bitch, it might be for the better of all of us.
The only Rambus machine I ever had was a dumpster diven P-IV 1.9GHz with 512Meg RAM. No way to upgrade the RAM because even on eBay RD-Ram was out of price. It's relegated to server duty at a proto-geek friend of mine. However, it was a rock-solid machine.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if Samsung plays this right (and has the patents), memory technology might take a significant advance....
Probably just dreaming... *sigh*
Re:Insane (Score:5, Interesting)
You should dig into the details of the case in depth, more than what you've read on slashdot. RAMBUS did do some shady things, but let us not forget that all the major memory makers plead guilty to price fixing and collusion. Some of their executives went to jail. They paid the largest antitrust fines in the history of the USA. We also have documented proof that they admitted (in regards to RAMBUS) that "all memory will be made this way ... hopefully without the royalties going to RAMBUS".
Perhaps it is likely that RAMBUS was not really welcome on JEDEC because the major memory makers knew their patents applied to the technology and wanted to avoid paying royalties.
Whatever the truth is, RAMBUS is not a patent troll by any means. They do real R&D to develop legit memory technologies, which is legitimately licensed by manufacturers. And in fact without the use of techniques RAMBUS pioneered, we would not have DDR/DDR2/DDR3. They just haven't necessarily played nice or avoided doing shady things. That doesn't make them an IP holding company that snaps up patentns with the goal of trolling larger companies.
Re:Insane (Score:2, Interesting)
There are two sides to every story. The Rambus side is that everyone else (Micron, Hynix, Infineon, etc.) tried to get Rambus to disclose its patent-pending stuff in JEDEC so they could all say it was public-domain and use it royalty-free. There's the infamous bad-faith memo [rambus.org][1] with the quote from the Infineon guy (pg 5 in the linked PDF): "One day all computers will (have to) be built like this, hopefully without royalties going to Rambus."
To me, that's like the definition of "in bad faith." I'm sure at some point Rambus acted in bad faith too, but don't make this out like it's a cut and dried patent troll case. As far as I'm concerned, Rambus invented the memory in your computer about 20 years ago and only now is turning a profit on their investment.
[1] I don't have a better source for this other than the obviously-biased rambus.org, but this quote is pretty well known and has been reproduced in many other publications on the Internet. Do a quick Google search.
Re:Rambus is still around?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the parent was trying to be funny. RDRAM was notoriously prone to errors, and had to use ECC all the time in order to be usable.
Re:Insane (Score:3, Interesting)
I started typing up a huge line-by-line response to this and it's pointless. Unless you can prove you were at the JEDEC meetings in the 90s (I wasn't), neither of us knows what really went on. Rambus surely did sell some crappy memory, but that wasn't the point - the point of their company was to license their tech to real memory manufacturers because it was good and it was at least a year (probably more like 3 in terms of what was needed to actually implement it) ahead of anyone else. If you're saying that there is no value in that because someone else would have thought of it later, then we should just agree to disagree.