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Patents

Samsung Caves To Rambus Royalties 92

Posted by timothy from the et-tu-samsung? dept.
denominateur writes: "According to this story, Rambus now made a licensing agreement with memory market leader Samsung that will allow Rambus to collect royalties on virtually all the computer memory produced by the market leader. Who will stop Rambus from getting more and more money on patents that basically don't make ANY sense?" Well, evidently, Micron and the two other companies fighting the Rambus patents in court seem like possibilities. I wonder what happens to those royalty deals, though, if the company goes Rambust ...
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Samsung Caves To Rambus Royalties More

Samsung Caves To Rambus Royalties

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  • But it seems to me that the major tech companies are scrambling to find an alternative to Rambus products...
    Increasing the speed of SDRAM to the point where there is a high failure rate, etc...
    Again, It may be that my perception is off, but I think if we wait if out, RDRAM will just blow over like MCA...
    ---
  • what about when a country with low labour costs and not much care for patent law starts producing cheap clones for not-much money. Say, China, f'rinstance. Then they'd be stuffed. By the free market no less. How positively ironic

    Well, no, not really. Any country doing this would start to find it hard to trade with western developed economies. China's entry to the WTO was strictly conditional on the government closing down pirate CD factories, for instance. And those CDs were just for domestic consumption, not for export.

    You are right, however, that IP law in its current incarnation forces a gross distortion of the free market.

  • "We think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop a competing technology to RDRAM and not infringe on our patents," he said. "We are extremely confident in our legal position."

    Yeah - but what about when a country with low labour costs and not much care for patent law starts producing cheap clones for not-much money. Say, China, f'rinstance. Then they'd be stuffed. By the free market no less. How positively ironic. :-)

  • RMBS is losing it's props (Score:5)

    by kalinh ( 167661 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @01:27AM (#655733) Homepage
    This is actually a pretty old story, well old as in at least 12 hours. I've been following the company pretty closely cause I shorted their stock abour 3 months ago. They dropped down as low as $36 a share yesterday as investors finally took their collective heads out of their asses and realized that Rambus has quickly developed one of the worst brands in the industry. Today's great news only resulted in a relatively mild increase (8% or so).

    The point is that the company has been artificially propped up in stature and prominence for a long time and these supports are slowly being removed one by one. But it's taking a long time.

    Intel has gone sour with RMBS and according to the public portions of the contract they signed with them all they have to do to cancel their commitments to promoting RDRAM with their new systems is write a letter terminating the contract. Why hasn't this been done then you ask? There are portions of the contract that are blacked out and the speculation is that RMBS has Intel by the balls on some IP issue that no one is talking about. Though that's just a good theory at this point.

    At any rate, even if RMBS manages to collect royalties on SDRAM and DDR-RAM and it still looks to me like Micron et al have a strong case on the whole RMBS breaking the JEDEC agreement and patenting jointly developed technology.

    Intel put together a group called the Advanced DRAM Technology (ADT) to develop a future RAM standard slated for 2003 and they didn't invite RMBS to the table. Regardless of whether RMBS has any claim on the patents that cover SDRAM and DDR, it's obvious that the rest of the industry (regardless of Samsung's licensing deal they are also working on the RMBS free standard) will be working very hard to bypass RMBS royalties as soon as possible.

    Even if RDRAM was viable on the desktop (it's not, as others have pointed out), it's gettign to the point where associating with RMBS is bad public relations. Doesn't it make you feel sick to think that your new PS2 purchase has contributed to the financial health of these leaches?

    There is a great article about this at Tom's Hardware from back in July [tomshardware.com]. It makes some long-range predictions, many of which are now being played out nicely. The whole article and, actually, all of the Rambus coverage on Tom's is excellent. Hey while I was there looking for the link I found this new bit about the Samsung deal [tomshardware.com] which totally jives with what I just wrote and also points out that many analysts beleive RMBS gave Samsung major concessions to stage a well-timed deal and that Samsung is possibly avoiding legal costs while waiting for Micron et al to take RMBS to court. It's also woth noting that Samsung has been one of RMBSs biggest allies for a long time.

  • Actually, I recall that a couple of Harvard (not certain about the school though)law students patented the wheel a few years ago when they found that there was no existing patent on it. They got in the newspapers at the time, but they never got any royalties, nor did they expect to. They just wanted to see if they could do it.

    Now, slightly back OT: Patents are, IIRC, awarded to "first-to-apply" which means if you beat RAMBUS (or anyone else) to applying for a patent, then you are initially awarded that patent. However, there is a system set up for "stink-patenting" which is patenting anything under the sun. I believe you have to prove that were working on the development before you are finally awarded the patent.

    Now, I view what RAMBUS is doing as wrong. Corporation-wise, it's incredibly intelligent and expected, because if you don't defend your patents, you can lose them. So I expect them to do so. What irks me is the arrogance of the situation. They can't believe that anyone can come up with something in the arena that won't infringe on their patents. I am so hoping that someone finds a way around this and gives RAMBUS the finger.

    Oh yeah, Amazon is evil too... :P (Karma-trolling)

    Kierthos
  • They do push for innovations. Everyone knows the process by which your invention is created. Which means that they can try to take the next step, by improving that invention. Of course, if you're smart, you're doing that as well, and hopefully, you're a step ahead, having done the work on the original patent.

    Basically, it's always a game of catch-up, because we always want faster, better, neater machines. Doesn't matter how it gets here, but give me that 10 GHz processor and a hard drive the size of a quarter that holds a Terabyte! Companies in the computer industry realize that the money is where the "best" machines are. You couldn't pay 99.999% of the people to take an 8086 off your hands these days, but the Playstation 2 comes out and there's a line around the block!

    Get the idea? Patents stimulate further patents. Maybe by the same greedy evil corporation that made the first patent on that tech, but there you go.

    Kierthos

  • Do patents push Innovation? (Score:5)

    by Veteran ( 203989 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @04:22AM (#655736)
    The answer to that question - as is the answer to most questions - is Yes and No. Nothing is all good or all bad. The universe works on Yin and Yang; something which is good has some bad points - something which is bad has some good points.

    When I say that something is bad, I recognize that it has some good aspects. I'll give a couple of personal examples on how the lack of a patent stifled innovation.

    Back in the early 1980's I made a trivial invention: a comb which wouldn't create static in your hair when you used it. It was a very simple invention; all you have to do is add a little conductive material such as graphite to the plastic in its molten state and the comb no longer will generate static.

    I applied for a patent and took the invention to one of the major comb manufacturers in the states. They were very happy to see me and excited about the prospect of being able to get an exclusive license on the 'technology'; they could see that being able to advertise a "static free" comb would create a competitive advantage for them.

    However, the patent office rejected my application (the interfering invention was a comb in a xerox copier - designed to drain off static charge from paper.) When this happened the comb manufacturer lost interest. What they said is that without a patent they would have no competitive advantage - as soon as they came out with their anti-static comb so would everyone else - so they weren't interested in producing the combs. While they might be an advantage to consumers they would be no advantage to the manufacturers without a patent, and to this day they don't exist in the marketplace.

    The second example comes from a somewhat more advanced invention: a differential microphone which cancels out feedback problems in live music. The mic works by having to microphone elements wired in reverse phase - one closer to the mouth than the other. Feedback from a speaker is rejected as common mode noise while the voice comes through as a differential signal. NASA has this patented as an external noise cancellation microphone for space capsule use. However the same setup can be used for PA or live music and cancel out most feedback. The results are dramatic: minus feedback, microphone speaker combinations produce much less 'mechanical' sounds; the voice from the speaker sounds very lifelike.

    I decided to forgo getting a patent; my earlier experience had cost me a lot of money and I wanted to do the right thing: I released the invention to a major microphone manufacturer - > placing it in the public domain . The results were the same as the comb: no patent - no manufacturer interest. Now 15 years later no one has seen a differential microphone on the market place because the manufacturers would not benefit from its existence - even though the public would.

    I hope from these two examples that everyone will be able to see that as long as we live in a world with competing manufacturers of commercial products - that a lack of a patent can and does stifle effective innovation.

  • What this shows is that the way the patent system works, it limits competition and makes research less interesting. Even if someone can come up woth some better technology, the economic advantage of doing so is partly removed.

    That's not how I read it. "Difficult, if not impossible, to develop a competing technology to RDRAM and not infringe on our patents"... That means the challenge is for someone else to develop an equal or better technology independently. The patent system is doing exactly what it's supposed to, providing protection to the company that originated the best ideas. It's up to their competitors to produce a better mousetrap, not cry foul because Rambus isn't sharing.

    Of course, whether or not those patents are excessively broad, and thus making it functionally impossible to develop any competing technology, is a discussion for another thread.

  • Especially since DDR SDRAM is now here, and is tearing up some serious shit in benchmarks. It's also less costly to implement, both for memory and motherboard manufacturers.

    RAMBUS sounded like a good idea once upon a long, long time ago, but I have the feeling it will wind up joining the EISA bus on the scrap heap of bad ideas gone wrong.
  • Your perception problem seems to be just a matter of lack of recent information.

    First, RDRAM has already blown over. Last week Intel publicly admited that RDRAM and their involvment with Rambus was a huge mistake. Even though the announcment tacitly admited that the mistake leaves the company in a very precarious position there stock went UP after the announcement.

    It also became clear as Intel announced future road maps that if they remain bound by the Rambus contract they will find a way to remain true to the LETTER of the contract, while in FACT supporting SDRAM. This will make Intel motherboards a bit more expensive and provide a useless slot, but it would get them off the Rambus hook.

    Itel THIS week formally requested Rambus to void their contract.

    RDRAM has blown over already. It's dead. A done deal.

    BUT:

    Rambus is claiming that they own patents on ALL computer memory and that from now on everyone owes them money on ANY memory products, including the SDRAM we've all been using for years without having to pay them a dime.

    RDRAM may be dead, but Rambus is a group of rapacious IP lawyers going out for a kill no matter what they have to do to do it, even if it means making enemies of every single human being on the planet and off of it.

    They don't care, they just want the money.
  • Now, I view what RAMBUS is doing as wrong. Corporation-wise, it's incredibly intelligent and expected, because if you don't defend your patents, you can lose them. So I expect them to do so.

    I don't know why everybody gets all the IP mixed up. You can pick and choose your fights with patents. You don't have to defend against every patent violation if you don't want to. What you're thinking of are Trademarks. Big difference between the two!
  • Disclaimer: This piece contribute to an OPINION only.

    Well, all we have to do is to let this negative sentiments about Rambus persist, for as long as we can.

    I'm pretty sure that people who work at Rambus would have a harder time looking for jobs once they're out of Rambus.

    And, current Rambus people have to retire sooner or later.

    People in HR departments, do your work: create the impression that "working at Rambus ruins your career" by grepping resumes that has Rambus in it, and send them to /dev/null. You don't have to give a reason - there's always someone who's more competitive than you. And there's always Ad Hoc hiring criteria that you can use.

    What good is a company, if there aren't people working in it?
  • I remember seeing an 3Com EISA NIC; weird stuff. Trouble is, they're all worthless. Not to worry; obsolete PCBs make great clocks. Personally, I'm thinking of turning my burned-out 440BX board into a mortarboard for when I graduate. When I receive my diploma, I'll put in a video card, CPU, and some RAM. THEN I'll shift my tassel to the left.
  • For what it's worth, your differential mic for live music would've lost out to prior art -- you state that this was 15 years ago, which would be circa 1985; the Grateful Dead were using precisely such mic setups in concert in the mid 70's.
  • Personally I think legal justice is only a rough approximate of the real thing.

    Something being obvious is a hard thing to proove in court.
  • I've replaced all of my memory with Othello chips. They're cheap, dual state units. A bit on the slow side and require a bit of manual intervention on the part of the user, but they work, and they're stable. . . Well, until the cat jumps on them.
  • The issue that is really twisting my shorts is what happens to the Samsun et. al. agreements if Micron wins it's case and invalidates the Rambus' DDR SDRM patents (I know, I'm an optimist)? My guess is that Rambus gets to keep collecting money for no good reason at all but I'd be curious if anyone knows for sure.

    --
    Don Dugger
    VA Linux Systems

  • You say that the manufacturers have chosen to not develop these inventions or novel applications of previously known technology? In a field where patents are used. And they are making their choice because patents are making a difference? So the existance of the concept of patents is causing the companies to not innovate?

    I was trying to say that a lack of patents held them back from bringing something to market - if patents didn't exist - I would never have brought the idea to them in the first place nor would most people. I am sure that there would be a few people who would innovate for the good of mankind: but I think the number of inventions would be way down.

    Please don't interpret this as favoring software patents: I think they are wrong and counter productive: Yin and Yang again; I think hardware patents work, and software patents don't do what they are supposed to do. Part of the reason for patents is that they serve as a 'teaching tool'; they show future inventors how something is done. In software the source code itself serves to perform that function , and therein lies a major difference between the two.

    Do I like Rambus: no - I think these guys are not the original inventors of the DDR section of their patents, I think they misappropriated them from JEDEC - and I think that there is a good chance they will lose in court on that if Micron can afford to fight them to the end. I don't like 'patent holding non-productive firms' like Rambus.

    About your comb solution: To produce static you have to have two insulators in contact with each other which are in motion. The nickel plating is not an insulator - so no static is generated.

  • The patent system is doing exactly what it's supposed to, providing protection to the company that originated the best ideas.

    Actually, I heard that they stole these ideas. And, for your information, the patent system is supposed to provide protection for inventors, not companies. It fails utterly at that.
    --

  • Have you heard about Windows Tax ??? ;-)

    So, who cares about the way it was achieved - cheating (everyone who dealt with MS got screwed) and monopolistic, predatory practices or cheating (Rambus patented technologies it was working on in the JEDEC industry body) and litigating over patents ???

    As for intentionally degrading technology, Bill does it unintentionally - have you ever tried to upgrade Windows just to screw your computer? ;-)
  • Putting advertisements up saying "I own XX amount of voting shares in this company. Happy to liquidate!"

    *grin*

    Ok, no, I *don't* know what I'm talking about.
  • You know, everyone on Slashdot seems to hate Rambus. But there has been positive artile after article and comments following them extolling the virtues of the Playstation 2. Not that it is a bad system -- its just that when you buy a Sony PS2 you are supporting RAMBUS -- The PS2 has 32 megs of RDRAM.

    Just an observation.
  • Hey, you wouldn't be the guy behind bustpatents.com, wouldn you? :-)

    The VESA story is one that should be known more widely. One of the problems with patents in the mind of the public is that there are no widely publicised cases like this, where not just the techies thought patents were abused, but the thing was actually overturned for being abused.

    If I wasn't getting the facts from sites like Tom's Hardware but from CNN, I'd quite likely believe that Rambus had invented semiconductor memory. Getting mind share for deep technological issues will be a problem forever...

  • ...all three parties involved...collectively own the patents on it.

    This is a dangerous statement. The reason patents (especially the ones on software) are so insidious is that seemingly unrelated patents might be infringed. For all we know, Rambus may have a patent on solder joints or bus buffers or some obscure aspect of timing, that could possibly be construed to apply to competitors products.

    Even if you were aware of the patent on client/server interaction held by Techsearch, and posessed the legal mind to be able to grok it, would you be able to assess your exposure to it if you ran a web server?

  • Patents do not push for innovation, not even in the long run, when used to block development. It is not in the interest of the patent holder that competing technology is developed, with or without the use of their patents. Patent holders like rambus who attempt to push patented technology into standard boards against agreements want the control to block development, relying on the long time to market for the products to milk what they can out of everyone complying with standards.

    Companies will pay royalties if they can easily pass the cost along to the consumer and dont have to go through the bother of getting the patent overturned. In this case Samsung and others play nice with Rambus while letting Micron do the dirty work.

    If I worked at Rambus I'd watch my back tho... Some memory manufacturers might pretend to be friendly but they'd love to see rambus dead and gone.

  • O.K, thats it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If Rambus hold all these patents on memory technology, then I refuse to support their technology any longer. I shall be removing all of my DIMM's when i get home. This will of course cause dificulties for me in the short term, but I intend to replace them with drum and core memory over the coming months. I would sugest that all Slashdot readers do the same.

    That should send a strong message to those damn Rambus suits!
  • The present patent term would be the equivalent of near a century when the patent system was invented IMO.

    Your opinion on wether or not patents help innovation in digital tech is just that, your opinion.

    IMO they only promote innovation for technology which is likely to remain undiscovered if not published or which is very costly to discover (biotech) and for a lot of patents thats just not the case.
  • Not if you use 1T-SRAM, which is SRAM in 1 transistor, http://www.mosys.com/ [mosys.com].

  • Everyone knows the process by which your invention is created. Which means that they can try to take the next step, by improving that invention.

    Sure, if we all want to wait 20 years for that next step to be taken. That's the problem with patents now. The term length is archaic. If a corporation doesn't have a strategy to make a profit from some tech within a 3-5 years, they don't create it. Period. Allowing them to block further innovation for 20 years does nothing to help increase innovation. This is especially obvious in the computer industry.

    Then there's the issue of theory versus reality in the granting of patents. Theoretically patents are only given for non-obvious, non-trivial inventions. I think we now know that that's the biggest load of crap you'll ever hear. The patent office is aggressively trying to give out patents for any damn thing you care to submit to them. Then people have to go to the expense to try and overturn the patent, which rarely happens because the patent holders know not to charge too much. Therefore a corporation has to look at its bottom line which tells it that it's cheaper to just pay the royalties rather than spend the cash it will take to overturn the patent (and then do the same with all the others?). So we basically now have tons of patents out there being used as legal extortion, doing nothing to increase innovation, but simply leaching off of a prosperous economy.

    So, you see, combine very long patent term lengths with overly broad and ridiculous patents and you have a very effective barrier to innovation. Now, I don't disagree with patents in theory, but too many people seem to think that the theory is the same as the reality. That's about as far from the truth as you can get.

  • I've still got some Fast page lying around... 2X8 and 2X16. Wanny buy?
  • If they win against Rambus, then can the people that payed the license fee/royalty get their money back? I would think that with DDR beating the pants off RDRAM in performance and recently being dropped by Intel that if everyone refused to pay Rambus they would wither and die.

    Companies need to stop infusing these idiots with cash to fight the legal battles. The last thing we need is to have the price of RAM go up again like it did after the series of earthquakes in Tiawan and then STAY artificially high.
  • I have to play devil's advocate here.

    You say that the manufacturers have chosen to not develop these inventions or novel applications of previously known technology?

    In a field where patents are used.

    And they are making their choice because patents are making a difference?

    So the existance of the concept of patents is causing the companies to not innovate?

    Does that not seem to be the reverse of your argument, even though it's premises are entirely from your argument.

    I in no way am trying to diminish your engineering feats, if anything this is aimed solely at the companies which through their greed chose to make your inventions household items.

    I for one would love an anti-static comb, being a bloke with >50cm of hair on my head (each grown strand, that is). My solution to the problem was to use those lovely shiny nickel plated cat/dog combs! (honest - they're great, give your scalp a good massage too, and are sooo easy to keep clean) (Hey - couldn't I patent that? :-))

    FatPhil
  • That's why. That's the only reason they gave in.
  • Interesting: that would probably invalidate the NASA patent - which is probably a noot point - I am sure it has expired by now.
  • I agree. The poster is essentially proving that the abuse of patents to exclude others for an inordinately long amount of time, has resulted in people NOT innovating because they'd have to fight or be subject to the existing patents. The solution then is to *shorten* the lifespan of these patents so that Xerox, or NASA, couldn't financially harm anybody trying to use those inventions (that is what is essentially being said here: an exlusive patent is the "guarantee" of not being sued for infringement; that is just a vicious cycle).
  • their patents. Maybe Amazon.Com will want them.
  • They didn't originate the ideas. They were part of a group that agreed not to enforce patents on the resulting products. Rambus left and patented everything they could get and are now sueing the other members and everyone else that comes along.

  • It'd take a lot of money to buy significant voting shares, and a lot of trouble to actually go down and pester them. Nobody is actually spending millions of dollars protesting, boycotting, etc. The money isn't there.

    Even if you could scrape it up, it'd all be going into the pockets of earlier investors; the people who supported this crap in the first place. Now they have been rewarded.

    What a precedent! "Do something evil, we'll buy your stock!"

    No, I think the correct methods are indeed market pressure, legal support, and political lobbying.

    --------
  • Micron, Infinion (fka Siemens), and Hyundai are all fighting.
  • Tate can talk all he wants to about engines, tires, and filling a need, but the fact of the matter is that he and his company are just power hungry and are trying to take over the memory industry, digging their roots deep, until you can't kill them without killing the whole of the forest of the memory industry, or even the jungle of the computer industry. It's simply a case of this little company waiting a decade and suddenly saying, "Oh, by the way, we invented all that, and now we want money. See you all in court!" Greedy bastards.
  • If you've ever heard Bowie's "Young Americans" you've heard exactly this. It wasn't meant as feedback control- it was meant as a sound effect. At any rate, this is something that people can do.
  • I think the problem is that patents don't recognize the dynamics of technology. A patent on SDRAM/DDR/RDRAM won't be worth anything when the patent expires! In the non-tech world, a telephone can still be produced after the 20 years (is that the correct figure) and still be useful. I think that patents, tech-related at least, should be limited to somewhere between 2-5 years. And the fact that RAMBUS chose to quietly sit back and watch as SDRAM became a computer industry standard, THEN chose to enforce [questionably attained] patents, smacks of unfairness. This not only harms memory producing corporations (having to pay license fees), but consumers as well, who ultimately will have to pay those license fees. This doesn't really encourage innovation either, as most people with computers aren't going to be able to run out and buy a new one when/if someone comes up with a competing standard. Not to mention the fact that RAMBUS used unethical and, IMHO, illegal, means to get the patents, and the resulting standards, in the first place.
  • Well, to be more exact, only an individual can ever be granted a patent - so NASA itself was not granted the patent - any more than IBM has ever been granted a patent. In each case the patents were assigned to them by the individual inventors.

    The government can have patents assigned to them; if you invented a 'photon torpedo' or any other advanced weapon and tried to patent it - your application would be kept secret and the patent would be assigned to the government. Yes you would get paid for it - unless it involved nuclear power of some type - in which case you might be executed - as it is a capital crime to do any non authorized research which might lead to a nuclear weapon. (Don't yell at me - I didn't write the law - I'm just telling you about it.)

  • Sigh, there were no patents issued in either case I mentioned: it made absolutely no difference whether or not patent law existed. When something is in the public domain the existence or non existence of patent law is a moot point; anyone is free to manufacture anything which is in the public domain with no restrictions.

    The point is that both inventions are in the public domain (the comb was back then, the xerox patent had already expired) and nobody is manufacturing them! It is not patent law which prevents them from doing so. I think most people understood that point.

  • Time to invest... (Score:3)

    by 198348726583297634 ( 14535 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @11:49PM (#655774) Journal
    in Rambus, and then donate your new wealth to the EFF [eff.org]...

    after buying a new car ;)


    But seriously, why don't more people take advantage of an opportunity to invest in companies that do well financially, and then turn around and donate the wealth to causes that fight them?

    What a way to stick it to the less-socially-conscious shareholders, eh?

    (btw, Pokey [yellow5.com]'s back)

  • Amazing... you get a +1 for posting this and I got moderated down to -1?? WTF! FUCK YOU MODERATORS!

  • 'Lets Take Over the World' say Rambus (Score:4)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @11:52PM (#655776) Homepage
    "We think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop a competing technology to RDRAM and not infringe on our patents," he said. "We are extremely confident in our legal position."

    And they say that patents push for innovation.. This is utterly crazy. While I'm all for a company protecting its intellectual property, and even making big piles of cash from it, I feel that Rambus have taken patenting to be a method of market domination. This isn't what patents are about.

  • Is Micron the only one left fighting now? (Score:3)

    by russcoon ( 34224 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @12:04AM (#655777) Homepage
    Ok, I haven't been keeping close score, so can anyone tell me who of the large memory manufactures hasn't given up the ghost to Rambus yet? Is Micron the only one left? If so, does anyone have pointers as to how they are faring in court?

    It's really a crying shame that ideas stolen from a public standards group are being enforced as patents by such an ill-willed set of legal thugs.
    -----------------------
    Widgets for the web
  • So these Rambus people are claiming they invented SDRAM, too. Or at least Sansumg is paying them royalties on SDRAM. This was news to me. It would seem that Ramrod is trying to claim they invented RAM. This is even worse than the one-click patent... and it smells like
    ---

  • Lets all tell Rambus to Blow Us (Score:5)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @12:09AM (#655779) Homepage Journal
    Kind of under the Radar screen, QDR [qdrsram.com] lurks. If it's not bound by Rambus patents, Rambus could be doing us all a favor by driving the prices of the older tech up to the point where QDR gets adopted much more quickly. Although the Q and A page doesn't specifically mention Rambus, it does say that all three parties involved in the creation of QDR collectively own the patents on it. Those parties do not include Rambus.

    I'd find it most amusing if Rambus ends up forcing its only worthwhile property (Its patents) into premature obscelescence through its collective greed and stupidity. I wonder if the company leaders think they'll be able to get jobs with any other tech company given their highly visible performance in driving this one into the rocks.

  • This announcement is probably meaningless without the details, which are hidden in the contract. It's entirely possible that there are no substantial royalty $$$ changing hands. Samsung has been deeply in bed with Rambus for a long time.

    IMHO, Rambus settled with Toshiba for a song, and just to begin the precedent. Plus Toshiba has had long-standing relationships with Rambus. Hitachi and NEC settled easily because they had a pending merger, and wanted no legal difficulties with it. The merged entity will have to re-negotiate with Rambus. So no substantial money has changed hands here, either. I just don't know about Oki.

    But (also IMHO) Rambus saw their status going down the toilet, and needed a positive announcement, in the face of the latest Intel revelations. I'll bet this Samsung deal is really a loss for them. I'll bet they were hoping to negotiate a "substantial" deal with Samsung later, and settled for a financially minor deal just for a press victory.
  • Drum and core are nice, but Rambus probably has patents to cover those in its portfolio, as well. I'm using mercury delay lines; I think those are safe.
  • Most people will never know nor care whether Rambus embarks in moves as idiotic as they do.
    They'll just see some review in some magazine saying that RDRAM enhances performance of their PC or workstation by 30% (it's not even true, but they won't be able to tell), and they'll shell the money for it gladly.
    Those who know are a minority (maybe vocal, but small). Those who care are even less. IT managers want only three things: cover their asses, justify their (high) wages, and get a job done by whatever means it takes. And it's them deciding what companies buy, (re-insert second paragraph here).

    Nonetheless, I really really hope that Rambus will lose their pants on their actions.
  • I've noticed a pattern of foreign firms settling ridiculous lawsuits rather than take their chances with America's courts and rapacious trial lawyers. Remember the suit Toshiba settled for $2 BILLION over a floppy drive controller that could theoretically malfunction under high CPU loads, which no one had ever manage to do in real life? This is just more of the same.

    Guess what, trial lawyers send 90%+ of their political "contributions" to the Democratic Party. If Gore gets elected, it'll be four more years of guaranteed courtroom insanity.

  • Obviously.. (Score:3)

    by Forkenhoppen ( 16574 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @03:26AM (#655785)
    Obviously, if Rambus goes bust, then the patents will be sold to whomever when Rambus' creditors put the company's assets on the auction block. Just because the company goes under doesn't mean the patent disappears.

    James
  • Does this mean that the price of Samsung's memory chips is going to increase in order to help pay these royalties, fobbing the cost off onto us poor consumers, or is Samsung going to do the honorable thing and to try to absourb the costs elsewhere?

    err, yeah that's right manichawk. All this time, Samsung have been paying unnecessary costs during manufacture of memory chips. After all, RAM is not a particularly competitive market, is it? Now that they have to pay an unexpected licensing fee to RAMBUS, they will simply "absorb" these costs somehere in their manufacturing process.

    Of course, it never occurred to them previously that had they eliminated these costs, they could have undercut their competitors' prices and remained competitive.

    Christ's fat cock, yes the royalties will mean higher prices to consumers.

  • Excuse me, but how are we waiting for anything? Remember just a few years ago, when a commercially available 1 GHz processor was a pipe dream? I'd say that appearances are definitely contrary to your position, and patents in the computer industry really don't seem to be slowing innovation at all.

    If patents are being approved hand-over-fist, it means that innovations are being made hand-over-fist. Yeah, maybe some of them are trivial, maybe some of them are obvious, but it's apparent that innovations are being made.

    I'm not arguing that RAMBUS isn't evil or greedy. In fact, I think it's more greed then evil. But that's not my point. My point is that their greed probably won't have a major effect. M$ has been greedy for years, and it hasn't stopped other OS's from coming out, or getting market share. In fact, M$'s greed (and stupidity) proved to be their downfall in the browser legal battle.

    Deal with it. Corporations will always be looking at the bottom line. Sometimes this means having to look like the evil greedy bastard. But that's what they have to do to stay around. Is it socially acceptable among the marginal population of Slashdotters? Apparently not. But we're only a very small percentage of the people out there.

    Kierthos
  • The companies didn't accept his technology because of the existence of competition, not patents. They wanted the marketing advantage they could derive from have exclusive rights to the technology. In the absence of the concept of a patent, these companies might not even exist because they need that marketing advantage to differentiate themselves. While some would argue this to be a good thing, it's difficult to argue this particular aspect of patents would increase innovation.
    --
  • Brand name doesn't only matter to consumers. It also matters to other companies. What industry coalition would ever again include Rambus? What motherboard maker would ever put serious effort into supporting Rambus chips? The only way Rambus can stay big is by getting and staying ahead of eveyone else, in order to force those they've doublecrossed to play nice, even though the whole industry hates them. Hell, even OEMs are probably pretty pissed, as royalties mean higher memory prices, and higher memory prices makes it harder to sell those sub $500 computers that are so popular these days. Rambus is going to have a pretty rough time, isolated and without corporate allies.

  • The German semiconductor giant Infineon expressed outrage at Rambus's demand for licensing fees. They plan to not only contest the patent but file claims that Rambus's patents are invalidated by their own prior art.
  • Just curious. I recently saw an advertisement in the latest Discover [discover.com] magazine for a "hands free headset" made by GN Netcom [gnnetcom.com].

    It's for what they call a Voice Array Microphone [sayican.com] that screens out ambient noise.

    Looks like it's designed to rest on the upper edge of your monitor. It's not designed for live music, but do you think it uses the technology you describe?

    Mojotoad

  • Re:Time to invest... (Score:4)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @06:17AM (#655792)
    Because of the Second law of economic thermodynamics. The trouble you can cause with your investment profits is never as great as the benefit the company recieves from your initial investment.

    I'll tell you what I wonder more people don't take the opportunity to do though.

    Why not, instead of spending millions of dollars protesting, boycotting, suing, etc. a company buy its stock and do likewise * as a voting shareholder?*

    No more marching up and down the sidewalks outside corporate headquarters singing songs and carrying signs. Now you can do it INSIDE the building.

    Now you don't have to struggle to have your voice heard, now you can take the floor, now you can VOTE.

    Unhappy with Nestle or BASF or Amazon? Don't get 1000 people to protest pointlessly, get 1000 people to buy 100 shares apiece and march *into the stockholders meeting* and protest THERE.

    Roll your stock over so each year your group influence is greater and greater. Use the tools of capitalism to fight it, just as the GPL uses the tools of IP to fight it.

    If you play the game by THEIR rules rather than trying to force your own on them they really are up a creek.
  • I think that in earlier times when the rate of change was lower that the 17 year period of a patent was reasonable; it took a long time to get things to market and to get things developed.

    In today's 'fast turn' circumstances I think a shorter time period is warranted.

  • BTW, isn't Dreamcast powered by Windows CE ???
    so, deprive Sony of revenues, give your money to His Billness :-(
  • This is also the basis of the "Humbucking" guitar pickup that Gibson has made at least since the mid 1950's. Which is probably where the Dead got the idea for applying it to microphones (which they handled by rigging two microphones together out of phase before each singer - but whether it's in one casing or not doesn't have much to do with the concept - the Gibson design is two pickups out of phase in a single casing).
  • Maybe it isn't what patents are SUPPOSED to be about, but out of the mouth of a notable IP enthusiast we have the evidence that the REAL use of patents is to SUPPRESS innovation.
  • No, the voice array microphone they describe uses a DSP to evidently pick up sounds only in the preferred direction - canceling sounds that come from a different direction. The tech I was describing is a simple differential mic where one microphone is much closer to the mouth than the other, but both are about equally distant from the noise being produced.
  • I agree. If someone hadn't already posted this, I was going to. I read that sentence, and the first thought to immediately enter my head was "Wow, I can't think of a better reason to take those patents away."
  • If Rambus folds, then their assets will be bought by someone else, and they'll enforce the patents, or realize that engineers work cheaper than lawyers, and just fuggetaboudit.
  • Please don't confuse the INVENTION with the PRODUCT. If I invent a way of producing light by placing a filament in a glass vacuum bulb and running electric current through it, let's call that the invention. If I decide I am going to have a 1" socket, set it to operate with 1 amp of current at 120 volts, put some frosting on the glass to reduce glare, that's a product. It is entirely possible, in fact likely, that the patents covering RDRAM are broader than the spec for the particular memory standard. The patent is written to give rights to invention, it is the inventor and/or his company that make a product and keep competitors from doing a almost-the-same knockoff. If you want to use their invention, in whatever form it may take, pay the piper. It's only fair after all.
  • Remember the criminal group from one of the first Tick episodes? (was it THE first?).

    The "idea men".

    Tick: "Hey, what's the big idea?"
    IM1: "well, we thought we'd extort a whole bunch of money, then we'd be rich, and we wouldn't have to work anymore. . ."
  • Meh, they're just pissed off because Intel finally grew a brain and decided to drop them.
    Now they're out for blood wherever they can get it.

    "The good thing about Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter eggs"

  • Whether you like it or not the only people capable of stopping them are those who have real power - politicians. So the only answer is either to get directly involved in politics or to influence those already involved - supporting those who think like we do (that it is insane) and lobbying others (who don't think yet as we do).

    I know that it fashionable to turn away from politics as something dirty and evil. However, such attitude doesn't help because it is the political process that shapes the situation. And it is true for every country - not only US.

  • Patent system problem? (Score:5)

    by atlep ( 36041 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @12:32AM (#655804)
    Rambus CEO Geoff Tate: "We think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop a competing technology to RDRAM and not infringe on our patents," he said. "We are extremely confident in our legal position."

    Patents exists so that those who spend resources on research should be able to get something back, and thus stimulate more research.

    What this shows is that the way the patent system works, it limits competition and makes research less interesting. Even if someone can come up woth some better technology, the economic advantage of doing so is partly removed.

    Looks like the patent system may in, in some ways, be working against what it should be working for.

  • Re:Lets all tell Rambus to Blow Us (Score:5)

    by milkman1 ( 139222 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @12:40AM (#655805)
    Some how I just don't see people buying SRAM (QDR is SRAM) of any kind for main system ram anytime soon. To make something like that pay off, Rambus would need to charge royalties of about $2 a megabyte. SRAM needs 4 transistors per memory cell, while DRAM (including SDRAM RDRAM etc) needs only 1 transistor and a capacitor. Thus DRAM is about 4 times as dense and 1/4 the price of SRAM. In modern applications, SRAM is only used for very high speed applications (L1,2,3 caches for CPUs, Supercomputers, high speed networking hardware) and for very small (8kbyte) amounts of memory where the cost of the extra transistors in the circuit is offset by not needing circuitry for refreshing the memory (smart cards, microcontrollers) and low power devices (graphing calculators) (SRAM which is not being accessed disipates almost no power, while DRAM needs to be rewritten constally) In general DRAM is the memory of choice for PCs. In addition to main memory, it is used on video cards (SGRAM, VRAM, WRAM, DDRSDRAM etc are all DRAM), hard disk drive, hdd controllers, cdrom drives etc. SRam is typically found only in the L1 and L2 caches.

  • The big question (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    is "Why?" Why do those big companies decided to cave in?

    Probably because they are now hoping to do the same dirty trick with patents themselves the next time the industry gets to create next generation memory standard...

    So now they make "caveing in" to such tricks a common practice.

  • QDR in this case is referring to SRAM. The same kind of RAM that makes up cache chips. One SRAM cell has more transistors than an SDRAM cell, though. But, for embedded applications, this should be pretty speedy. I'm sure you could even use it for a very fast 3D card (250MHz SRAM X 4 = 1GHz). Not bad.
    --
  • I'm really starting to think patents have outlived their usefulness along with IP law in general. Exclusive government-granted monopolies are fine for individual inventors who NEED that monopoly of their work to just get off the ground before being beat to market by some huge competitor stealing their technology but this is just being ridiculous. It seems like all the inventions are being produced and patented by large corporations which just turn around and use these intellectual monopolies to bolster their market position by trying to find any and all ways to attack their competition.

    Take Amazon's one click shopping for example. How in the HELL is that innovative and worthy of patenting?? We need to have the patent office either disolved or pump more money into it so they can examine each and every patent application thoroughly for both prior art and just general common sense. As silly as it sounds, I wouldn't be suprised if someone held a patent on the wheel.

  • Timothy wrote: "I wonder what happens to those royalty deals, though, if the company goes Rambust ..."

    I haven't seen the agreements, but you can write a deal that says anything you want, so there could be language dealing specifically with Rambus going out of business.

    If Rambus did go under, its assets (desks, gumball machines etc) would be liquidated or sold off to other companies. Those assets include the patents we're talking about. Someone else (like, oh, say, Intel) would pay for them and own them, and start collecting the royalties.
  • It might be that I didn't understood correctly how 1T-SRAM [mosysinc.com] works, but I think it's only SDRAM made look like SRAM for memory controller.

    Therefore it has to be *really* fast internally with extra logic and cannot possibly be cheap. It sure is fast but far too expensive for system memory. Nintendo is using it for graphics adapter memory - I think this is the least valueable location you will [ever] see this type of memory.

    If 1T-SRAM can really be done (without a tweak like this) it could really change situation. Then it would be like DRAM without refresh cycles and without capasitors. I doubt that's possible but even 2T-SRAM would be a dream come true. Remember that as long as we are talking about desktop computers it really doesn't mean how much power those are using but how fast memory you can get economically. It doesn't matter if it's 1T-SRAM (tweaked DRAM) or 6T-SRAM (real SRAM) if it costs the same [as long as speed is the same].
    _________________________

  • Unfortunately, Rambus will never die. (Score:5)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @03:58AM (#655811)
    Rambus currently has a stake in PlayStation 2; the system RAM. Therefore, not only is Rambus sucking the blood out of legitimate RAM manufacturers through royalties, they're also being kept alive by the largest media juggernaut in the world, Sony.

    Therefore, if you truly oppose Rambus, don't buy a PlayStation 2. That also holds true if you oppose SDMI, the DMCA, and the MPAA. The PlayStation 2 is the epitome of media corruption, and the corruption of the world by the media companies. By watching the facial expressions of people playing the PS2 demo unit, I learned the true meaning of "the idiot box".

    In short, oppose Sony's monopolistic dreams: buy a Dreamcast.

  • While it's true that "QDR" refers to SRAM, Kentron has a technology called "QBM" which is essentially the same thing for DRAM (SDRAM specifically). They probably do have the sole patent for the tech, though. See www.kentrontech.com.
  • ...yes the royalties will mean higher prices to consumers.

    According to the article, about $1/box.

    If its a valid patent, I can live with that. And if its not a valid patent, why did Samsung and the others settle? I'm sure its not because they can't afford the lawyers.

  • Seriously, at least Bill Gates doesn't want to make oodles of money off of millions of teenyboppers going to movies and concerts, as well as Rambus charging royalties for every memory piece manufactured.

    In my opinion, Bill Gates is the best of the worst of the computer world. Sure, he's conquered the consumer/workstation market with Windows, but at least he doesn't intentionally degrade technology while pretending that it makes an improvement (like Sony's PlayStation 2 and its 4 megabytes of VRAM, and the latency and outrageous cost of Rambus which overshadows its high clock speed).

  • The way Rambus handled the situation might not have been the best, but they DO have the patents and they aren't trivial "one-click" ones either.

    No, they're exactly like "one-click" patents, except that the way Rambus went about securing and enforcing them is much slimier. Of course, the concepts involved may not seem "trivial" to *you*, but you're not an EE, so--no offense--your opinion isn't what's important here. Indeed, the fact that not only has every other memory company developed interfaces which are "infringing" upon these patents but that Geoff Tate could actually say, "We think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop a competing technology to RDRAM and not infringe on our patents," strongly indicates that many of these patents are indeed obvious to someone skilled in the art.

    Sort of like how "one-click" might seem like an inane concept to get a patent on to you, because you know that any decent programmer worth a salary could implement it; but to the average person, it involves a moderately impressive knowledge of cookies, databases, etc., and thus isn't trivial at all. Luckily, patent law provides that the former, not the latter standard is necessary. (Unfortunately, the USPTO seems to enforce only the latter anyways.)

    As for Rambus' way of handling the situation being "possibly not the best"--no, it was a bit worse than that. What Rambus actually did was take part in JEDEC, the open industry-wide consortium developing the next DRAM standard, and secretly go about filing patents on the very standard being discussed. Either they simply failed to disclose the fact that they had already filed for patents on this technology (and possibly steered discussions into technologies sure to infringe on their patent applications)--which is not only immoral but illegal as well--or they actually went about filing these patents *after* the standards had already been agreed upon, which is hideously immoral and illegal.

    The memory manufacturers know this. Companies will never pay royalties unless they absolutely, positively have to.

    Not in the memory biz. Indeed, the reason the dramurai have been so reluctant to pay off Rambus is not that they're unused to paying royalties--the DRAM business is rife with royalties and cross-licensed patents; TI already gets patent royalties from every piece of DRAM produced, for example--but rather because they feel that Rambus has gone about getting these patents in a slimy underhanded way.

    But this is balanced by the fact that before Samsung, every DRAM manufacturer licensing Rambus' patents was Japanese. Business in Japan is a much smarmier back-room affair than in the US, where giant corporations are used to working out complex patent licensing schemes on trivial patents. This is because Japanese patent law allows patents on ideas, not implementations, and trivial ideas at that--something that the US patent system "doesn't allow", or at least isn't supposed to. The result, of course, is a sluggish deflationary economy ruled over by a handful of giant patent portfolios--er, I mean corporations--in which all economic activity must first be cleared with complex licensing and back-room deals, and in which fighting off yet another extortive patent demand is almost unheard of. An economy which can't grow to save its life, despite interest rates of essentially 0%. The future of the US economy if we don't reverse the recent trend in the USPTO.

    Now, the addition of Samsung, a Korean company, to the list of Rambus toadies might seem noteworthy and surprising, except that Samsung is the one dramurai which actually has an important business relationship with Rambus, being the only one currently producing RDRDAM in any quantity (except Toshiba's RDRAM production for PS2). Thus they actually have a reason to fear the loss of their RDRAM license, and thus there are entirely sensible reasons why extortion should work on them, unlike the Japanese who give in to extortion for entirely cultural reasons. Indeed, it's sort of amazing--and a commentary on the validity of Rambus' claims--that Samsung actually held out this long.

    When Micron and Infineon license these patents it will mean that they actually have merit (or that they've lost in court). Until then, this is just business as usual, and another sign of how the current patent regime is stifling progress and innovation.

  • Excuse me, but how are we waiting for anything?

    It wasn't until the last decade that patents have been granted on any old thing you care to dream up. It's a combination of things really. You don't have to submit a working model anymore. You don't have to show that its non-trivial or non-obvious to an expert in the field because there are no experts doing patent reviews. You can basically look at developing trends and start trying to figure out where they will logically go and then start patenting any idea they can come up with. The sad thing is that such patents are likely to be awarded.

    If patents are being approved hand-over-fist, it means that innovations are being made hand-over-fist.

    You'd have to be an idiot to believe that. You think that just because the PTO approves something it's innovative? Are you nuts!? The guy who runs the PTO has already made several statements to the effect that he wants to make it easier for companies to obtain patents and expand patents into as many areas as possible. They don't even abide by the original standards set for patents, being that it should be something non-trivial and non-obvious to an expert in the appropriate field. They don't have experts to review the patents. They have underpaid reviewers who are not experts do a quick prior art check and rubber-stamp the thing. We've already seen how attaching the words e-commerce or internet seem to automatically allow any old idea to qualify as innovative. We've seen how an obvious use of cookies gets Amazon a patent. These are not innovations, they are just fairly obvious applications of existing technology. Perhaps the cookie itself might have deserved a patent (my bet is that there is plenty of prior art), but using the cookie for the exact purpose for which it was created (i.e. storing state information for a stateless protocol) is not worthy of a patent. The PTO has just gone hog-wild handing out patents like candy on Halloween. Are you seriously telling me that you believe that just because these corps get patents on this stuff that it means that it's innovative?

    M$ has been greedy for years, and it hasn't stopped other OS's from coming out, or getting market share.

    Actually, the only OS that has gained any significant market-share since Microsoft hit the scene is Linux, and that's only because it doesn't really compete in the same space as Microsoft. It's free, it's open, and it's primarily a server OS. It's almost a market unto itself (although it is definitely starting to target Microsoft more and more).

    In fact, M$'s greed (and stupidity) proved to be their downfall in the browser legal battle.

    They haven't fallen yet. While I'd like to see it happen, I wouldn't be so quick to count them out. They seem to have the upper hand in the appeals court.

    Sometimes this means having to look like the evil greedy bastard.

    Entire corporations exist that create nothing and do nothing but amass a portfolio of patents to extort money from corporations that do produce and create things. That might not be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the PTO will give you a patent on damn near anything. That allows those corporate leaches to suck money from the people actually doing real innovation. Combine that with the expense and difficulty of getting a patent overturned and you have a system that acts as a stone around the neck of true innovation.

    To sum it up, patents are a good idea, but the current implementation sucks badly. First of all, reform the PTO. They should be a government agency supported and funded by the government, they should not be made to fund themselves by living off the fees collected from patent registrations. That creates a terrible conflict of interest. Second, we need to require that patents be reviewed by qualified experts in the appropriate field. If this means we need to pay more for patent reviews, then so be it. It's cheaper for the economy in the long run than supporting all those corporate leaches. Third, patents should be available for public scrutiny for a period of time before they are actually awarded. This will allow people to present any prior art they are aware of that may block the awarding of the patent. This will help avoid the expense and difficulty of overturning a patent that never should have been awarded. Finally, the term length of a patent should be reduced to 10 years. Software and business model patents should be abolished completely. Copyright covers software. Business models should not be covered at all.

  • I completely agree with patents in theory. I'm just disgusted with the way the system is currently handled.

  • The good news, though, is that you gain a non-destructive read. And the cat hazard is no worse than the fact that stray gamma rays can flip the occasional bit.

    And let's not forget that Othello chips also offer row and column addressing inherently.
  • "I feel that Rambus have taken patenting to be a method of market domination. This isn't what patents are about."

    Sure it is. Patents are supposed to give you a temporary monopoly for your invention, and in exchange you have to share the details of that invention. If your invention is the only way of achieving something (as Rambus seem to be claiming), more power to you.

    Patents DO push for innovation... in the long run. The technology is known by everyone and once the patent runs out can be used by everyone. The alternative is keeping your technology secret, and that wouldn't do jack for innovation.

    The way Rambus handled the situation might not have been the best, but they DO have the patents and they aren't trivial "one-click" ones either. The memory manufacturers know this. Companies will never pay royalties unless they absolutely, positively have to.

    If I hade patents and someone used them without compensating me, I'd be screaming foul too.

  • Re:more on QDR SRAM (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I totally agree [dolphinsex.org]. Slashdot should really start filtering [sex.com] everything, because it's easier on the children that way.
  • Mainly because the people with enough cash to do serious investing don't give a fuck about what the company's political, economic or environmental policies are.

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