Rambus Suing Hitachi and Sega 30
madcat15 writes "I was reading EETimes and came across a piece discussing Rambus' lawsuit against Hitachi and Sega. This also includes an injunction on the importing of Sega's DreamCast consoles, which use a Hitachi chip. Hitachi is counter suing. Patent Warfare? " This comes on the heels of a patent infringement suit filed by Rambus against Hitachi back in January.
That's a good detailed history; thanks! (Score:1)
Re:Let's give Rambus a break (Score:1)
Re:Let's give Rambus a break (Score:1)
Finally, DDR SDRAM is being supported by IBM, Micron, Via, AMD, Samsung, every other memory manufacturer, and Intel. Yes, Intel has DDR-SDRAM for Willamette on their roadmap. So, get a clue. DRDRAM is not going to "win", neither will DDR. They will coexist with one likely getting the larger market share. I personally think that DDR is better suited for the general purpose PC due to cost issues. But, DRDRAM could be better suited to application specific devices like Playstation 2 where having few pins and high badnwidth per pin, reduces costs enough to overcome the cost penalty of DRDRAM silicon. An interesting outcome would be if DDR-SDRAM dominated the PC market, but the focused application device market boomed resulting in DRDRAM actually having a larger total memory market share even though it doesn't show up in PCs.
Finally, Intel has proven that the PC market can support multiple sockets, with Slot 1, Slot 2, PGA370, and FC-PGA. Allowing AMD to come out with Slot A and Socket A. This suggests that the market is more than capable of supporting multiple memory technologies as well.
Re:Slashdot editors caught in time warp? (Score:1)
Re:Slashdot editors caught in time warp? (Score:1)
Slashdot editors caught in time warp? (Score:1)
Re: "Flamebait" (Score:1)
Oh dear. Then I must have hallucinated 25 years of flame wars on USENET.
I hate it when that happens.
__________
I had a rambus once... (Score:1)
...wait for it....wait for it....
*rimshot*
-Andy Martin
Re:You're forgetting someone (Score:1)
Silly me
I -was- kinda thinking that I left someone out of the equation.
Another thing to note: Hitachi also makes general purpose processors (including the one that's used in the Dreamcast). It DOES make one wonder if it isn't Andy Grove calling the shots over who to sue...
RAMBUS Patents (Score:1)
http://www.dramreview.com/dramrev/ip/ip_rambus_
My Opinion (see above--I'm neither): Hitachi's countersuit charging Rambus with Sherman Antitrust Act Violation looks extrememly weak. They essentially admitted that Rambus' patents are valid, and that Hitachi used the technology disclosed in under NDA. So Hitachi is bascially claiming that a company with $45 million in sales and $8 Billion in market cap is a monopoly akin to the evil old Standard Oil or IBM. HAHAHAHAHA!
The rest of the DRAM industry is going to be leaning heavily on HIT--which wants to sell its DRAM business to NEC--to settle before trial, and not test whether Rambus' patents extend to DDR and SDRAM. Rambus has said that if it goes to trial, they will not license ANYTHING to Hitachi. Heads Rambus wins, tails Hitachi loses.
They will settle by August.
This is great. (Score:1)
get in corporate world. Hopefully this will
hit their acceptance. Meanwhile i'll keep my
fingers crossed for AMD..:) Hey, one can only
wish....
RAMBUS is just hurting themselves... (Score:1)
Re:Let's give Rambus a break (Score:1)
Re:Let's give Rambus a break (Score:1)
hrmmm... (Score:1)
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They likely need the money (Score:1)
All companies need to generate revenue, and it would appear that rambus has decided to resort to collecting royalties (or attempting to at least) to suppliment their bottom line. I'm not saying that I support their actions, just that it would seem that there is a semi-legimate reason behind their thinking.
If profits decrease, it scares the shareholders, which can result in the death of a company.
Opinion, not fact.
Furor over Rambus patents (Score:2)
Rambus applied for a patent in 1989, that was subsequently abandoned. They applied for a continuation later, which was granted. Because it was a continuation, their protection goes back to the 1989 filing date.
In the early 1990's, Rambus was participating in JEDEC during the preliminary definition of the SDRAM standard. A few years into the 1990's they left.
At this point, it's worth noting that the 1989 patent, and its continuation were rather focused on the Rambus part, itself.
Around 1996, Rambus filed a series of patents, also continuations of the earlier patents, that broadened the claims. These patents were issued in 1999. Those claims appear to cover certain aspects of SDR and DDR SDRAMs.
Because the early patents were tightly focused, and later patents extracted rather broad claims, things are unclear to me at the moment. The particular timing of the situation with JEDEC muddies the water's too, IMHO.
I guess we'll find out in court.
Re:Let's give Rambus a break (Score:2)
If you're referring to the JEDEC conferences, then RMBS is still in the wrong by not informing any of the other companies about their pending patents on this particular technology.
I agree that they should protect their IP, when it was developed entirely by them. However, this particular technology -wasn't- and they are trying to protect a patent that should be held by the JEDEC members as a group.
Re:How exactly is 'ban on importing' enforced? (Score:2)
besides, customs agents have more IMPORTANT things to look for, like guns or drugs. So how exactly does this affect me again?
Think about it this way. If you have to pay someone to smuggle something into the country then you are going to be (generally) screwed concerning it's price. If the item gets stolen or the people sending it have to get a special courier to get it to you without customs seizing it then prices will go up and quality could go down. Instead of getting the Dreamcast in a timely manner you may see it in say 6 months.
Re:How exactly is 'ban on importing' enforced? (Score:2)
> store in Japan to send me the Dreamcast I
> ordered.
Probably true...but then again...its not illegal
for companies in the netherlands that sell Magic
Mushrooms mail order to fill your order either.
However...it would be quite illegal for you to
order them and recieve the packge. By doing so
you are importing something thats not "legal".
> And the post office isn't going to
> open and inspect EVERY box coming into the US.
> (easily millions if not billions per day). And
> besides, customs agents have more IMPORTANT
> things to look for, like guns or drugs. So how
> exactly does this affect me again?
One never knows what they might inspect. One
never knows what customs might do either. I was
talking to someone who had a cactus imported
mail order. Perfectly legal non-psycoactive
cousin of peyote. The shipper marked the box
with the word "peyote" by mistake...customs
opened it...saw it wasn't peyote (which is
interesting since it would be easy to mistake one
for the other) then just to be assholes cut off
the growing tip (cacti grow from the top...so this
one will have to grow new tips in the form of buds
before it will actually grow)
As for more important things...guns and drugs...
how pointless. Good to see my tax dollars
being spent to stop the importation of things
that can be bought on any streetcorner, and
always will be.
Let's give Rambus a break (Score:2)
If companies can't partner up without the fear of losing their IP then the consumer will lose the benefits of corporate teaming (which are often positive).
So, before you bash Rambus for defending their IP rights think about how you would respond if your "partner" screwed you by stealing your IP and using it to compete against you.
Patent Warfare? (Score:2)
There may be big bucks in staking out an area of technology with patent(s); however too agressive of a policy may lead to alternative technologies being developed with the result that the original tech becomes unused. Happen in the chem industry many times.
you have to wonder... (Score:2)
Serves them all right... (Score:3)
However, if they are using something Rambus patented, and if that patent is legitimate, they have every right to sue them; legally, the patent doesn't even need to be legitimate, as we've seen so many times already.
You're forgetting someone (Score:4)
Wouldn't it be handy for them if the Dreamcast got pulled off shelves just as they launched the PS2 in the US and Europe?
wall street (Score:4)
IP is anathema to many if not most open source fans, so that really puts us at odds with wall street. I think it comes down to ethics: we got 'em and wall street don't. Or maybe the ethics of wall street are so obfuscated that hackers can't recognize them as ethics... Someday this kind of nonsense will stop. We'll change the patent system. We'll change the people in companies. Eventually most companies will have to become at least somewhat friendly to open source and open standards. But, the driver behind all of it is the oligarchy. Most of the rules that we live by aren't in the constitution, they are in the federal and state codes, and in the body of law precident. Those affect us daily more than the constitution does. We're really in a giant power struggle here, and our values are openness and freedom. The heads of companies that make up rules to hurt their enemies are playing a losing game in my opinion. That goofy word "coopetition" is a new business model that hasn't trickled down very far yet. The interaction that we see between Red Hat and others such as Mandrake is how things will be resolved in the future.
I predict that these silly lawsuits will rise for a few years, peak out, then decline as companies open their eyes to a better way of doing business.
Fabless Rambus stupid to attack DRAM makers (Score:5)
Rambus's much vaunted patents have never been tested in court and many of them are pretty dubious. Let's see how desperate rambus is. In a full patent infringement trial rambus risks losing these patents. And then what are they worth? (not that they are now worth $350/share today - same kind of idiot analyst reasoning that thinks Qualcomm will collect 20 billion/year in CDMA licensing by 2010; the SEC should investigate this whole stinking mess).
SOP in Japanese patents (A cautionary tale) (Score:5)
The only surprising thing about this 'patent war' is that it seems to have reached the point of actual litigation.
In Japan, companies tend to patent much smaller, details and modificantion than are considered patentable in, say, the US. If you patent a new type of lightbulb, you can expect other companies to patent all sorts of minor modifications to it: your new bulb with different bases, shapes and colors (if they can show a benefit or special application), with multiple filaments, higher output, lower voltage, etc.
50+ years ago, the net effect was to allow them to (in essence) bypass international patents for the domestic market (Okay, GE has the patent on that, but we have the patent on it in green!) This would hold up in a Japanese court -- not that many companies tried to enforce their rights in Japanese courts, it was 'small fry back then'
In time, this also led to a strangling network of interlocking patents. Any big company could push you to license your patents, relse they'd threaten to enforce the myriad tiny patents they or their corporate allies (it was like politics or the schoolyard) held to paralyze you or block your use of your own patent.
Result, lots of sharing and intertwined relationships, which is, of course, how the Japanese preferred to do business, anyway.
Of course, today's geek might be horrified to see the ultimate effect: locking out the little guy. He doesn't have a ton of patents to play the Pokemon Patent Trading Game (TM) (pat pend), so he usually gets bought out, absorbed or ignored (The sea of tiny modifications effectively allow the companies to use his innovation, masked as their own). Their start-up environment is dismal.
Ask anyone who tried to open a Japanese market (or business presence) in the 70's/80's. The culture shock was like a 2x4 to the head. It felt like socially condoned fraud, theft, monopolism, -- and a lot of words I can't print here. Comparisons to the Mafia were common (behind closed doors)
Now the trend in the US seems to be to patent anything that isn't tied down, and lots of things that are. We've seen where this leads. Is it where we really want to go?
__________
Lawsuits... (Score:5)
RMBS is suing Hitachi over -timing- techniques that RMBS has patented (think DDR type of things for an idea, IIRC). Normally, this wouldn't be -too- much of a problem (well, it would morally, but not legally), but these techniques were developed in an industry standards setting, JEDEC of which both Hitachi and RMBS were/are members.
Why is this such a problem? Because one of the things JEDEC memebrs agree to do is inform other members of pending patents, and to -not- patent technology developed in the JEDEC conferences/discussions. -THIS- is why Hitachi is counter suing, not to mention the anti-trust aspects as well. Take a look at how RMBS is licensing the technology: they require the licensing of -other- technologies from either themselves, or another outfit before the potential licensor can license the RMBS technology. This smacks of product tying in a possibly illegal manner.
Also note that killing Dreamcast off helps Intel (RMBS's heaviest investor and backer) -and- Microsoft with the XBox, by giving them only 2 competitors to try to nuke, instead of three. This is also -very- reminiscent of Intel's pending litigation with VIA...
This nonsense needs to stop, before we -really- see technological advance halt for 20 or 30 years.
A few of the facts (Score:5)
Rambus is suing for infringment of the following patents:
Synchronous memory device having a programmable register and method of controlling same
The present invention includes a memory subsystem comprising at least two semiconductor devices, including at least one memory device, connected to a bus, where the bus includes a plurality of bus lines for carrying substantially all address, data and control information needed by said memory devices, where the control information includes device-select information and the bus has substantially fewer bus lines than the number of bits in a single address, and the bus carries device-select information without the need for separate device-select lines connected directly to individual devices.
Synchronous memory device
Same Abstract
Integrated circuit I/O using a high performance bus interface
Same Abstract
Synchronous memory device having an internal register
The present invention is directed to an integrated circuit device having at least one memory section including a plurality of memory cells. The device includes an internal register to store an identification value which identifies the device on a bus. The device further includes interface circuitry, coupled to the bus, to receive identification information and a read request. The interface circuitry includes a plurality of output drivers and comparison circuitry. The output drivers are coupled to the bus to output data on the bus in response to the read request. The data is output synchronously with respect to first and second external clock signals when the comparison circuitry determines the identification information corresponds to the identification value.
Part of what Rambus has patented is its self-enumerating memory scheme. (Yeah, I know; self-enumerating busses are old hat. Rambus innovated their way into the realization that memory busses could self-enumerate.) As it happens, though, SDRAM and derivatives don't self-enumerate. The USPTO full-text database is down (/.?) but if the abstract is to be believed the first three above don't apply to SDRAM.
They also patented transferring data on both clock edges (yeah, I know; IBM was doing this in the 60s, but Rambus innovated etc.) This has been in use in SRAM since before Rambus' patent app so I'm not worrying a lot.
Also not directly mentioned is that Rambus has patented programmable CAS latency (do you really want to know?) in memory devices. Since programmable CAS latency has been around in controllers since the '80s and SDRAM moved low-level controller functions to the memory this may be headed for the scrap heap; in the meantime the SDRAM manufacturers (via JEDEC) are removing the feature from their parts. Considering what this is costing them, they are not happy with Rambus.