Rambus drops some patent claims against Nvidia
Rambus has asked the International Trade Commission to terminate an investigation of Nvidia relating to four patents as part of a November 2008 complaint.
Rambus provides high-speed memory interface technology, though in recent years the company has become better-known for intellectual property litigation practices. Rambus has sued many of the world's largest chip manufacturers.
Nvidia's David Shannon
(Credit: Nvidia)The Los Altos, Calif.-based company conceded before the ITC that Nvidia products do not infringe on its four patents, and also asked for termination of several claims from a fifth patent in the ITC action, according to an Nvidia statement.
"We are pleased Rambus has recognized the weakness of these patents and claims," said David Shannon, Nvidia executive vice president and general counsel in a statement. "These withdrawals represent essentially half of the patents and one third of the claims asserted against us, and we look forward to addressing the remainder of the case."
The current ITC litigation originally included nine patents involving memory controllers related to graphics processors.
In June, Nvidia announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had rejected 41 claims, in seven patents, which Rambus had asserted in the ITC action against NVIDIA.
Rambus has a checkered track record on lawsuits. The European Commission launched antitrust investigations against Rambus in 2007, alleging intentional deceptive conduct in the context of the standard-setting process, citing its behavior as "patent ambush."
In January, a Delaware federal judge ruled that Rambus could not enforce patents against Micron Technology. Judge Sue L. Robinson, in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, ruled on January 9 that evidence "spoliation" occurred when Rambus allegedly destroyed important information related to the case that could be used against it. Robinson's decision rendered Rambus' patents unenforceable.
Brooke Crothers has been an editor at large at CNET News, an analyst at IDC Japan, and an editor at The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, among other endeavors, including co-manager of an after-school math-and-reading center. He writes for the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
When you post an article that only tells a lopsided version of the story, you just look like a ridiculous mouthpiece for a biased article.
Rambus does not have a checkered track record on lawsuits. They have won in every venue that has completed. The Judge Robinson decision that you cite is being appealed, and will be compared to Judge Whyte's spoliation decision, where using the same evidence he found that Rambus did not commit spoliation. In fact, much of Judge Robinson's decision cited missing documents that Rambus in a reply proved HAD been submitted. And further, that documents that Micron used as examples of documents that Rambus had destroyed and that were obtained from other sources were actually provided by Rambus themselves.
In short, Judge Robinson issued a a draconian solution ruling Rambus' patents unenforecable with a decision that doesn't even pass the initial laugh test. Conicidentally, two days later she is announced as a featured speaker at the FTC's conference.
The FTC recently dropped their case against Rambus after the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Remember it was the FTC case where the FTC's own Chief ALJ ruled that the case against Rambus should be dropped, and that the evidence showed Rambus did nothing wrong in JEDEC.
Contrast that with your statement about the EU, which completely ignores the FTC rulings and results which are based on the very same evidence and facts. What do you think will happen with the EU ruling?
You failed to mention the Antitrust trial which starts in less than three months, with potential damages in the billions of dollars. There is a pulitzer prize waiting for the journalist who actually writes the full story. But I guess it won't be you, because you need to sell ad space.
You may not like it, but Rambus is a company that is far ahead of it's time. It's biggest problem that it is run by people, but it has some darn smart engineers. In the early '90's they figured out how to make DRAM run synchronously at a speed 15 times faster than the current standard. the big problem was, computers didn't really need that speed until the late 1990's. In the meantime Rambus has been developing Flexphase to allow for different circuit board trace lengths and numerous other inventions that the industry is just getting around to realizing that they need.
And Rambus is already there. The biggest antitrust trial in history starts in less than 4 months, and the electronic media has ignored it. While Rambus was inventing, the DRAM manufacturers were trying to put Rambus out of business by keeping RDRAM prices high, and selling SDRAM and DDR below cost. They were telling Intel they were committed to ramping RDRAM production because Dell Compaq and HP were all clamoring for more RDRAM to meet demand. But at the same time, the manufacturers were putting out news snippets that RDRAM was too expensive, too hard to make etc. In the case of one manufacturer, they even bought a profitable plant from a competitor producing RDRAM and then promptly shut it down.
Keep your eyes open, you ain;t seen nothing yet. Rambus isn't the bad guys.
- by rickster2515 June 8, 2009 7:28 PM PDT
- I think that the article could use facts from both sides of this legal tussle. It does seem to be biased.
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