Rambus winning suits but not influencing people
Rambus, the litigious Los Altos chip designer, is the subject of a New York Times story Monday that begins with the efforts over the last two years of Craig Hampel, the company’s senior engineer, to “design the next leap in memory chip technology,” a way to allow computers to display complex graphics even faster.
However, the bulk of the article, by Laurie Flynn (a former Merc colleague who edited our computing section back in the day) is focused on the company’s efforts to translate patent litigation victories into better returns for its shareholders as well as the ill will generated by such litigation getting in the way of acceptance of Rambus’ newer technologies.
“Every day we’re amazed at how victories in court don’t necessarily lead to settlements,” said Sharon Holt, Rambus’s senior vice president for worldwide sales, licensing and marketing. “We really need the courts to help force these parties into settlement talks. We’re not having as much momentum in signing new business as we’ve liked.”
A lawyer representing Micron Technology, just one of the many company’s Rambus has sued, accuses the chip designer of displaying “patent troll” behaviour, referring to the “derogatory term used to describe companies or individuals who make their money suing companies for patent infringement.”
That Rambus’s business model has evoked such hostility in some quarters of Silicon Valley is no longer a surprise. “It’s the industry not wanting to pay someone a fee when they didn’t make anything,” said Jeff Schreiner, an analyst with Capstone Investments who has followed the litigation closely.
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Rambus made some incredible inventions years ago and Hynix, Samsung, Micron and others decided to steal these inventions and not pay. Rambus was then forced to defend itself in court but has kept on innovating and the theft has kept on also.
The sad part of the story is that even though Rambus has one EVERY SINGLE court case the system allows for appeals and allows the different companies to retry tried issues - it’s been almost 10 years and some patents are about to expire.
Where is swift justice that motivates American innovation?
Rambus has suffered irreparable harm and the infringers keep infringing (with good help from their connections).
“accuses the chip designer of displaying “patent troll” behaviour”
Those are tough words coming from a company who has admitted to taking advantage of the DOJ’s amnesty program in the biggest price-fixing cartel in history.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_/ai_n11420205
“That Rambus’s business model has evoked such hostility in some quarters of Silicon Valley is no longer a surprise.” Yep, and it is Rambus who is a victim of thieves who lie, cheat, and steal at every opportunity to cover their patent pirating tracks. Sure they are hostile. I have no doubt that if they could have just taken Rambus property without consequence they would not be so hostile.
Rambus needs to keep administering attitude adjustments to these corporate crooks. Who cares if they are mad that they were caught with their sticky fingers in Rambus’ patent cookie jar? I suggest that Rambus should shift from slamming the lid on those fingers and instead start turning them into hamburger.
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - http://www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - http://www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - http://www.patentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.
The memory business, it appears, is not all beer and skittles.
But the article, while somewhat informative, told only half the story; it left out all the bits about Rambus’ participation in JEDEC meetings, its considered choice not to explicitly disclose patents at these meetings which it knew would apply to the standard under development, its systematic, ongoing re-writing of these patents so as to cover the new standard, its later destruction of documents possibly pertaining to these activities, and its attempt — via a business arrangement with Intel — to force the rest of the industry to adopt its patented designs, thereby erecting the oft-mentioned “tollbooth” on this industry’s roadmap. Further, the original licensing agreements contained provisions which essentially precluded technical development by the licensees which might have released them from their chains at a later time.
It’s no wonder the industry is less than enthusiastic about partnering up.
To add insult to injury, the original reference designs weren’t particularly stable, and were hard to troubleshoot with the tools and techniques of the day. Parts were expensive to produce, and quite power hungry — not a good fit for inexpensive desktop PCs with slim profit margins.
I’m sure that other readers will protest that juries have found Rambus innocent of all these things; there’s an active community of folks who hold the stock and are deeply convinced of their own virtue for doing so. And it’s true; superior lawyering and world-class forum shopping have netted Rambus favorable legal outcomes. But they can’t address fundamental shortcomings — a coercive business model, based on Hunt-brothers-style market manipulation to redirect income to their firm, coupled with designs not well-suited for the applications they were intended to address. And legal victories can’t negate the effect of the bad-faith dealing Rambus conducted with JEDEC and the memory makers.
These are not people I’d choose for a business partnership.
Uh.,.. Valdez…
Apparently we wouldn’t choose YOU for a ping-pong partner.
[your facts are selected, slanted and somewhat wrong.]
cheers, Rammax
Valdez, cut the crap, you work for PR firm either for Hynix, Micron, Samsung, Nanya, etc. You and I both know very well Rambus did not do any of what you just stated, and oh btw, it was proven in court, a real one.
Valdez
Well, I guess if you consider court wins at the CAFC twice, the CADC once, and an opponent rejection at the Supreme Court — I guess Rambus has, indeed, been forum shopping. On the district court level, i guess we just plain got stuck with Ronald M. Whyte as our patent judge since HYNIX picked that forum. Oddly, as ill suited as you say that Rambus designs were, those same ill suited designs are still being practiced and stolen by your thieving cohorts today (almost twenty years later. Good luck selling your story of downtrodden deceived multinational corporations being deceived by a firm with less than 100 employees at the time.
Kenny
Valdez –
You sound exactly like one of the cartel lawyers. You’ve lost at every turn and now it’s going to be the cartel’s turn to pay up.
And I just hope that Micron didn’t violate their DOJ amnesty by calling Rambus a patent troll. I guess the cartel thinks if you repeat a lie long enough some will believe it. You obviously have.
Valdez is giving us the story put forward by the infringing cartel.
Three independent courts have now held that Rambus did nothing wrong at JEDEC. In fact Rambus warned JEDEC that they had applied for patents which the JEDEC proposals may infringe. Rambus could not give more details as (a) the patents hadn’t yet been awarded and (b) giving details would invalidate the patents concerned. In any case members of JEDEC knew the details of the Rambus inventions as some years previously they had each been given them under individual non disclosure agreements.
The reputed problems of producing RDRAM is part of the fiction put forward by the infringing cartel when putting their price fixing and ‘Rambus killing’ scheme into operation. And yes, the members of the cartel have now pleaded guilty to charges arising from this scheme, laid by the DOJ, and senior management have gone to jail.
Finally, in most cases, Rambus has not sued anybody. The litigation was started by the cartel with members simultaneously sueing Rambus in four widely dispersed courts. Its not a pretty picture when you know all the facts and it is distressing that it has taken so long for the truth to start to emerge.
Oh, and least we not forget…..the “industry” that you defend and sympathize with, pled quilty to price fixing and were forced to cough up the largest fines in the history of the Department of Justice. Just who are the criminals in this senario Mr. Valdez?
Valdez,
I could echo what the others said, but instead I will take a different tact.
Rambus left Jedec in 1996. They told Jedec at the time that they had patent APPLICATIONS (they did NOT have patents, and they did not know if the patents would be granted or not …. makes it kind of hard to be specific).
But let’s move forward to 2003. Not only is this 7 years later, but it’s 3 years after Rambus is in patent infringement court with Infineon, Micron, Samsung, and Hynix (and, later, Nanya and NVidia). What happened in 2003? Jedec adpoted the standard for DDR3, which just happens to incorporate Rambus patented technology (flexphase) …. on which the patents were not even APPLIED FOR until 2000. Did they license the [patent applied for (and later issued) technology? No. Did they ASK Rambus (not a Jedec member when ANY of THIS technology was developed or patents applied for) about a license? No. Did they attempt to get a RAND agreement covering Jedec member use of this technology (RAND = Reasonable and non-discriminatory) NO. What did they do? THEY JUST STOLE RAMBUS IP …. AGAIN!
DDR3 could not exist without this technology. It is unrelated to the technologies now in court, the technologies that are the subject of the current court cases on Rambus’ SDRAM, DDR and DDR2 technologies. And these patents don’t expire until 2020.
Do you know why they just stole Rambus’ IP for DDR3 in 2003? Because, bottom line, “once a thief, always a thief”.
Rambus is 10 years or so ahead of the whole rest of the memory industry. Always has been, and still is. Without Rambus, we would not have had SDRAM, DDR, DDR2 or DDR3 until at least 5 years later IF AT ALL. The debt that the computer and memory industry owes this company is tremendous, and all that Rambus has gotten is $40 to $80 million dollar per year legal bills for a company whose gross REVENUE (not profit, sales) is only $100 to $200 million per year.
Valdez is a mindless twit. He’s not only clueless … he don’t even suspect anything.
I must agree with Valdez.
Had Rambus not employed superior law firms and exercised long-standing political ties to Washington D.C. regulatory agencies, they may not have garnered themselves the sought-after position as defendant in the largest, longest case in the history of the FTC. One can only conclude that this was a blatant case of forum shopping as the chief ALJ, in a 334-page opinion, completely exonerated Rambus of all charges.
Furthermore, as part of a brilliant legal strategy spanning multiple decades, Rambus utilized empty pizza boxes and phone book covers to document activities pertaining to their scheme to deceive JEDEC and the multi-billion dollar DRAM industry. By disguising this devastatingly incriminating evidence as rubbish, their wholesale destruction of evidence has thus far slipped through the federal court system relatively unscathed.
Yes, Micron is an interesting piece of work. Breakthrough inventions come from individual inventors and their small companies. As soon as the inventive company creates an important invention companies who call themselves innovators (Micron, Intel, Apple, HP Cisco, etc.) come after a piece of the action, usually a very big piece. It is unfortunate that the PR spin masters of companies like Micron have so misused the word innovators and innovation that it has come to mean unauthorized combining of others inventions into a product.
It is important to note that patent pirating companies like Micron have created a trade association calling itself the Coalition for Patent Fairness, otherwise known as the Piracy Coalition.
It is this group which is behind the “patent troll” myth. After they steal others inventions they compound their sins by characterizing anyone who has the gall to defend their patent property rights as trolls.
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - http://www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - http://www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - http://www.patentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.