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.'"
comon practice? (Score:1)
ATSC standards had problems becuase of 8VSB for this same reason.
Re:comon practice? (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:comon practice? (Score:4, Insightful)
the price of admition to JEDEC open meetings was a contract that you would put all your patents on the table and that information shown was considered "shared" and "safe" under the contract everybody signed. Rambus broke both.. they did not disclose all of their patented technology and actually lead joint discussions in that direction, and they took information about JEDEC direction back to the patent lawyers and edited the patents they didn't disclose to cover stuff that JEDEC engineers were working (SDRAM, DDR, ect.) on to avoid/work around patent issues. Then they dropped the meetings, said they "quit" and started filing suits.
Then they somehow got a court to say that the sharing contract was just a "suggestion" and couldn't actually take away the changes they made to the patents... then used the meetings they tainted as evidence in court JEDEC was willfully violating their precious patents. Then they had the gull to sue that JEDEC colluded to exclude the expensive RAMBUS ram from the market after they tainted the open discussion and started suing over patents!!!
This matters to the FTC because the industry had a contractual arrangement between manufacturers to disclose/share patents in an open manner so the FTC didn't have to bog the courts down with frivolous lawsuits. Rambus came in, broke long established contractual terms and then actually got a court to say such terms in trade associations were just "suggestions" and that individual patent owners could withdraw from whatever arrangements they set up whenever they wanted. note this affected MP3 when several companies used contract loopholes to withdraw their patents form established agreements then re-sued companies that had already paid up. This affected MPEG-LA in the same way. The recent Agilent lawsuit over some hardware decoder was also another patent revoked from an industry association then they sued all the members. The FTC wants a stop to the practice of a few SCO types breaking the system.
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they may not have proposed technology, but they sat in meetings while other company's engineers discussed patented technology in the pool and quietly slipped out then edited their patents to cover the work-arounds in meetings they were "part" of.... They did far more than just "omit" patents, they used inside knowledge that was shared under contract to hold everybody honoring the contract IP hostage... and they did it on purpose, it wasn't some kind of oversight or change in management. This case has been a
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Standards Bodies Also Changed Because of Rambus (Score:2)
Subject goes here (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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the FTC's problem is that JEDEC had a contract that Rambus pretended to sign that was supposed to prevent a situation like this from happening. Rambus basically lied from the moment the contract was presented and did not fulfill their sharing arrangements from the start. The lower courts let them out of the contract then let them sue all the manufacturers over information Rambus withheld/shared that was supposed to be under contract ... at this stage in the game it's impossible for companies to write good
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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
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do do do-do do-do-do-do dooooooo
Munumunuh [google.com]
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The thing that causes monopolies in a free market is consolidation due to economic hardship, bad business decisions, predatory business tactics, or limited market. Natural Monopolies arise wherever a company can provide infrastructure to a captive audience. That has nothing to do with the government, unless the government is actively encouraging it or trying to stop it. Prove me wrong.
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A patent IS a government created monopoly.
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Antitrust legislation was created as a way to breakup 1800s-era monopolies like Standard Oil. What many historians ignore is that Standard Oil was only a *temporary* monopoly for about ten years. What later happened was that other oil companies (mostly in Texas) arose and undercut Standard's market share, thereby restoring a competitive environment.
That's true in virtual every case. A company establishes a monopoly, but it's only a temporary one because other competitors either (a) innovate and kill off
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after about ten years ceased to exist due to other formats like DVD Audio and MP3s
MP3? Arguably. DVD Audio? Don't make me laugh- outside an audiophile niche, that went nowhere and likely never will now.
Monopolies do not last forever. Therefore there's no need for government to break them up.
Poor logic and an easy get-out since very few things last "forever". (Even if we use a non-pedantic definition of "forever" as being your lifetime and those of your next few generations of descendants).
If the monopoly has a damaging influence for what one could consider an extended period of time (e.g. sets an otherwise fast-moving industry back 25 years) or is having an extremely pernic
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I don't think so. You made the claim, the burden of proof rests on you.
And I just gave three examples.
Natural Monopolies arise wherever a company can provide infrastructure to a captive audience. That has nothing to do with the government, unless the government is actively encouraging it or trying to stop it. Prove me wrong.
That would not be a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly would be if McDonalds was the only place that sold hamburgers not because they owned copyrights or patents to hamburgers but no one else wanted to sell hamburgers. What we have in your case is the "natural monopolies" that only one or two companies can do because they received government funding (or permission) either in the past or in the present. Which would be the ISPs who got the phone lines (the needed infrastru
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Now answer me, what is wrong with my understanding of the term "natural monopoly" when applied to say, a telephone company? Or a power or water company?
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All i have to do to disprove this statement is cite an example of a government that has not.
No, you have to find a company that has not. Not a government. And let me make a clarification, I mean an abusive monopoly that most people pay (or affects an industry in a negative way). Not just some monopoly that makes some small product that only has a niche audience.
Now answer me, what is wrong with my understanding of the term "natural monopoly" when applied to say, a telephone company? Or a power or water company?
Because a power or water company isn't really natural, its allowed and encouraged by the government. To say that it is natural is to say that if there was a world devoid of any government that was free-market that there would only be on
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Also, you might wanna read this [wikipedia.org]
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So these regulations, like rules against anti-competetive practices and insider trading.
These evil evil regulations.
Lets look at a world without them.
Say I set up a bus service. There's already a larger company providing a bus services in the city but they're expensive. I charge half the price that they do and start to get a lot of buisness and make a small profit.
They see what I'm doing and the next week my buisness has dropped right off as they start providing free bus services in my town. They have deep
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How quickly they forget (and I mean not just you but everybody else who couldn't come up with a reply). Standard Oil [wikipedia.org].
You don't seem to un
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The thing that causes monopolies in a free market is
Lobbying for government protection of the current (competitively successful) leaders, so that they can rest on their laurels instead of remaining competitive.
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Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporations will generally screw over any person or entity, government or otherwise, to make a profit and protect any revenue stream. There is a strong case that deregulation would only fuel things like the financial crisis in the USA at the moment.
First fix the mindset of corporate CEO's who care not for the people working in the company who are not directly related or the end customer. They seem to exist to screw companies over and run with large payouts when all the problems that get swept under the carpet eventually emerge.
More government regulation could be beneficial here to check that corporations are really as valuable at any point of time as their own balance sheets say they are.
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Corporations will generally screw over any person or entity, government or otherwise, to make a profit and protect any revenue stream. There is a strong case that deregulation would only fuel things like the financial crisis in the USA at the moment.
Yes, but lets just take one example, Microsoft. What keeps MS having a monopoly? Patents and (strong) copyrights (the government would naturally stop me from pirating an entire copy of Windows and selling it, but piracy for personal use would be non-legally enforceable, nor would copying small parts of the OS so long as it was clean-room), something that a deregulated economy would not have.
For example, Linux would no longer have the restrictions of the MP3 and DVD issue, DRM (so the all iPods would be
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this monopoly was put in place way back in the early 90's and Intel was complicit getting Rambus on JEDEC in the first place. Somebody really oughta than Intel for funding Rambus a la SCO to do this to the industry.
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Magnuson-Moss (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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.
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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,