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FTC Pursues Rambus Appeal To Supreme Court 50

pheede writes "SCOTUSblog brings us news that the FTC has appealed the recent circuit court decision regarding Rambus's deceptive conduct on the JEDEC standards committee, where they conveniently avoided telling anyone that they owned patents on the resulting standards. The FTC, which is proceeding on its own without help from the Justice Department, notes the circuit court's 'sweeping rules that would immunize' deceptive conduct by would-be monopolists 'in most circumstances.'"
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FTC Pursues Rambus Appeal To Supreme Court

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  • ATSC standards had problems becuase of 8VSB for this same reason.

    • Re:comon practice? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Thursday November 27, 2008 @05:16PM (#25911471) Homepage Journal
      When ATSC was created, everyone knew who owned the patents on the different parts of it. What RAMBUS did was guide the standards process so that the standard would involve patents they own in the standard, without letting them know.
      R The difference here is that RAMBUS disguised the fact that they had patents on the technology in the standard while in ATSC everyone knew about the patents before hand. That is the difference.
      • Re:comon practice? (Score:5, Informative)

        by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Thursday November 27, 2008 @11:57PM (#25913579)

        and it was just before the submarine patent changes were put into effect, so they altered their patent descriptions to cover stuff they heard in "open" meetings. They abused the hell out of the patent office and even the FTC can't let the court's decision stand because it would wreak havoc on contractual dealings between companies.

        • Did others notice that the Justice Department can't be bothered? They must be too busy pursuing prosecutions against the Guantanamo detainees and publishing the records of the people actually prosecuted for Patriot Act discovered crimes. Oh, there haven't been any? Amazing. I'm hoping that Mr. Obama will take a large paddle to the backside of that whole department and set them to actually prosecuting criminals, instead of wasting time inventing things like 'unlawful noncombatant' to ignore international tr
        • One of the consequences of Rambus' actions is that standards bodies now take extraordinary measures to ensure that all contributors fully disclose all ideas that could be patented by the company so that they don't get submarined by them. Evem VESA, which is a video standards body, got to the point where all of their calls start out with a disclaimer by the moderator saying something to the effect of: "You cannot discuss patented or soon-to-be-patented ideas, and the contributor releases all claims to the
  • Subject goes here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by snowraver1 ( 1052510 ) on Thursday November 27, 2008 @04:57PM (#25911357)
    Using deception to gain higher prices, the Court said, normally does not have the tendency to shut out rivals.

    This quote near the end of the artice I find troubling. It almost sounds as though the court condones the use of deceptive practices.

    It's true that companies use deceptive practices (the iPhone article earlier, cell phone companies in general) and those companies are certianly thriving, I think that the courts should be smacking companies that use blatent deception.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 )

      What the court said was (paraphrasing slightly) was that it doesn't give a Goddamn about one business screwing over another business using deceptive practices. It's only if said practices can be shown to have harmed retail purchasers that there's a case to answer.

      It may seem clear to me and thee that achieving a patented monopoly by stealth would harm retail purchasers, but that's up to the plaintiff to demonstrate.

      So, sure, it's a dick move by the circuit court, but the law says what the law says. Th

  • Magnuson-Moss (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27, 2008 @05:09PM (#25911429)

    The Commission noted that this was the fourth time it had appealed a case to the Supreme Court without the U.S. Solicitor General... The agency said it has had that authority since he Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act went into effect in July 1975.

    I've heard of Magnuson-Moss mostly in the auto world, where it's known as the law that forcing manufacturers to cover warranty repairs on modified vehicles unless it can be shown that third party parts, modifications, or unintended usage contributed to the failure needing repair.

    This is an interesting use of Magnuson-Moss which, as far as I can tell from the Wikipedia article, comes from the section stating "Likewise, service contracts must fully, clearly, and conspicuously disclose their terms and conditions in simple and readily understood language." What a great law.

    • Re:Magnuson-Moss (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lysergic.acid ( 845423 ) on Thursday November 27, 2008 @09:35PM (#25912789) Homepage

      great law indeed. i'd never heard of Magnuson-Moss before, but i wish the conspicuous disclosure of terms and conditions provision were more generally applied to cover all business contracts and advertising. perhaps it'd mitigate "small print syndrome" and other deceptive business practices.

      maybe then instead of pouring millions of dollars into marketing/advertising and other manipulative business practices, companies will instead have to put that money into R&D to develop competitive products/technologies and succeed based purely on their technical merits (instead of, say, lobbying/bribing/tricking standard-setting bodies to adopt your proprietary technology as an industry standard).

      i mean, things like films, music, clothes, etc. are highly subjective, thus they inherently rely on promotional advertising/marketing to gain exposure, after which each work can be propelled on its own creative/aesthetic merits. however, technology should to be judged on its technical merits, not which company has the biggest marketing budget or the most lobbying power to buy their own industry standards.

    • Rambus signed a disclosure contract with JEDEC then didn't honor it. They didn't disclose all the patents they were working on, and they didn't disclose that they would use information from joint meetings held under the contract to edit their own patents. The courts actually let Rambus filch on the contract and get way with suing using material discovered by misleading the committee. That's why the FTC is involved, because there was a long-standing contract that was legally enforced until Rambus broke it,

C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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