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:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:3, Interesting)
there is no doubt in my mind they're nothing but patent trolling scum who deserve to be beaten down in court.
But they haven't been... and are collecting their patent fees from Samsung who likely kept an eye on this case to see whether they needed to pay. So, do you hate all patents?
Re:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe you feel this way because there is no room in your mind when your mind is made up.
If there is any merit to their claims, aspects of Rambus's technology was co-opted into memory standards without their say so. The reason that it "can't be worked around" is not because its so fundamental as to be obvious, but rather that it was so widely adopted, the "true" crooks figured they'd have killed the upstart well before it became a problem.
I for one wish Intel didn't punk out on RAMBUS memory back when P4 came out. It was the only 1:1 FSB to memory speed pairing they had for a full year before they came out with a DDR board that was good but couldn't compare to the potential they left at the alter.
I think that idea that the memory makers colluded to inflate the price of RIMM chips by constricting the supply is part of the anti-competitive suits filed against them. (there was a ruling against some memory companies 1-2 years ago wasn't there?). Anyways, by killing the directly RAMBUS branded stuff where there was no chance of disputing patent, they could get away with ganking some of the less directly obvious types. They thought.
It would be cool if this leads to faster memory in the future, or bus technology, though I would rather see a company like rambus tackle the storage bottleneck (despite SSD drives).
PS, patent troll
Does not equal: technology engineering company who licences their creations (or sue's to protect them). These guys actually kept creating IP after the memory fiasco. In fact, alot of it is in your game consoles and HDTVs...
Does equal: bought some rights to something they may or may not even understand and are using the rights to go after people for money (trolling like fishing boats)
Re:Not a troll (Score:5, Interesting)
They're kinda a troll and kinda not. They were awarded patents for their inventions... and they were awarded patents for what they overheard at JEDEC and then ran off and patented (and no one else did first because the whole point was to devise a patent-royalty-free standard).
Rambus vs. JEDEC (Score:5, Interesting)
Before commenting (especially if you are defending Rambus) you might want to do a search on "rambus jedec spec". The google search is:
http://www.google.com/search?q=rambus+jedec+spec&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a/ [google.com]
One of the results is:
http://www.abanet.org/antitrust/committees/intell_property/june21.html/ [abanet.org] (FTC Charges Rambus With Abuse of Standard Setting Process).
In a nutshell, Rambus participated in the standards setting process for SDRAM technology without informing any of the other members that they were actively pursuing patents in the technology used to implement the standard. Once the standard was finalized, they disclosed the patents and demanded royalties.
Methinks that Rambus was in the wrong. So does the FTC.
Re:Geek Logic (Score:4, Interesting)
What the hell kind of comment is that? Take flight. There are two ways to do it - be lighter than air, or equal your weight with thrust.
Unless we find some way to modify gravity, that's it. In that case, the "idea is so critical to [flight that] it cannot be worked around". You can easily make the case that simple physics will allow you to arrive at both solutions.
Re:A patent troll with a win streak? (Score:2, Interesting)
Only problem with that is, is that RAMBUS controls almost all of the DDR patents as well. They submarined the entire standard.