Litigious Rambus Wins Again 161
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."
Re:Just to clarify.... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. And Rambus has been losing [wikipedia.org] 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).
Re:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:2, Informative)
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:Guaranteed to fail (Score:3, Informative)
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:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:1, Informative)
Soooo if somebody solves a critical problem then by default they shouldn't be granted a patent just because that's the only solution? Our patent system IS screwed up, but it's that kind of innovation that it's supposed to protect. Whoever comes up with the solution should reap the benefits.
Re:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:3, Informative)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Bad faith (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.