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."

Hot Grits Indeed!

[rueger]

Wow. I can remember the days when this was a meme that all of the cool kids tossed out while laughing with derision!

Re:Now I feel old.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is not the same as "not having a working product". There clearly was a working product since others were able to manufacture RDRAM.

Re:Now I feel old.

[saleenS281]

They absolutely had both an original idea and a working product. Just because they didn't have manufacturing facilities doesn't mean they didn't produce a product. Does AMD not have a working product because they spun-out and sold-off Global Foundries? Does Sony not have a product because they use AMD CPUs? RDRAM was absolutely rambus's product, that was never up for debate. What was up for debate was whether DDR memory infringed on their patents - it did, and they won just about all of their lawsuits.

Re:Now I feel old.

[saleenS281]

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. As for how it's still valid - it doesn't matter. If you infringe a patent, get sued, and the patent runs out before the court case finishes, you aren't magically exonerated from all the years you infringed on the patent while in court. Doesn't work that way champ.

Re:Now I feel old.

[bhcompy]

Let's talk about goalposts, then. What you're saying is that the NFL doesn't have a product because the products are the teams that are NFL licensed franchises and the NFL itself is just a logo without a product. I don't think the billions being paid to the NFL support that statement. Products don't have to be tangible to be products. A product can simply be a license to a design. A better statement would be that Rambus never manufactured the product(then again, many hardware companies pay other companies to manufacture their products)

Re:This is horrible news

[Pinhedd]

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.

ARM Holdings PLC is an R&D company that doesn't manufacture anything. They generate all of their revenue through licencing IP to third parties whom in turn do the manufacturing. I do not see anyone calling them a patent troll.

Rambus Inc. is definitely a shady corporation but simply failing to manufacture products with IP that one owns and initiating litigation against those who infringe upon it does not automatically make one a patent troll.