Comments on: Rambus' main man in the memory war

CEO Harold Hughes says it's no fun suing people. But the company will do so if the memory makers won't agree to pay royalties.

[Pop4]

Opinion: > > > (I plan on enjoying this article later in the day.)

Personnally I am a huge fan of PNY and their combining a quality issue in the 2005 PNY 512mb pc2700/pc3200 DDR Dimm modules.
After the modest resolutions settled in the Rambus case this past month, I excited and curiously, visited the Rambus website(Google) and knew there were looming conclussions or advancments.
Less inportant was the 'SOHO" (?XDR) x64 "REV" Dimm displayed for the lead-in for the website. The current values in the transparency of computing covers (All) the memory option in their place and purpose; where there is a cross platform.

[kgofsb]

Primary example of patent abuse

Rambus attended meetings of the standards organization that created specification for memory chips, where they promoted their ideas for DRAM technology, and encouraged the standards organization to adopt their ideas. They did not tell the other members that they had filed patents on the technology they were hoping to get adopted as standard. The standards body (naively) trusted Rambus and incorporated many of their suggestions, and memory manufacturers invested billions of dollars designing new chips and setting up production lines. Once they started selling those chips, Rambus sued for patent infringement.

Now you have to ask yourself one question: Is that fraud?

The amount of money that Rambus invests in their "intellectual property" is dwarfed by what the memory chip companies have to spend to design and build chips. They are not innovators, they are parasites. The patent system that is supposed to reward inventors and risk-takers ends up doing the opposite.

But don't expect your government to do anything about this problem. They are too busy worrying about the 4% of the population that doesn't have the legal right to live here. OR maybe they want to invade another country that sits on top f anoil field.

[mortis9]

i wholeheartedly agree

and the sad part is that it would only take one high profile defeat in court for this to be turned against Rambus. This is a fundemental problem in US patent law, but you're right, it doesn't seem to be very important. I will point this out: those industry players that are getting sued and losing money to Rambus have for more influence on Capital Hill than does Rambus, so it stands to reason that these laws work in their favor as well, otherwise things would likely play out differently.

Another great example is the Blackberry suit. Those patents were overturned yet RIM still had to make a payout of nearly a third of a billion dollars. That doesn't make sense to me.

[CtrlFreak]

Beg to differ

The mem companies knew about the Rambus patent apps years before adopting the standard, under NDA, as they have now admitted in court. They adopted the standard, built and sold the chips anyway, assuming they could wipe Rambus out (note the recent anti-trust admissions and convictions). If that doesn't warrant a legal victory for Rambus, what then?

[rensanceman]

Rambus Insider selling after Hynix patent win??!!

As a shareholder in Rambus I am very angry at the duplicity shown by the insiders of the firm. After the Hynix win of over $300 million, the insiders, including notably Danforth, began selling their stock which is a terrible sign for Wall Street. They began selling in the $40-38 range. The stock now sits at around $31. What is different from what Ken Lay of Enron did and the insiders at Rambus. SEC and class action attorneys please take note.