Hi all; Semico makes public article on lawsuits from a year ago. (This is old news, but the article hasn't appeared publicly before.)
Lawsuits and the DRAM Industry
In the last decade there have been a variety of lawsuits related to the DRAM industry. These disagreements have been between manufacturers of product. The latest lawsuit is an intellectual property company, Rambus, suing a DRAM manufacturer, Hitachi, and, by the way, a Hitachi customer, Sega.
What makes this particularly interesting is the timing of the lawsuit. Rambus publicly touted forecasts of huge volume in 1999 that did not materialize. The year 2000 finds DRAM vendors struggling, - and investing large sums of money - to manufacture this product at reasonable yields. Again, claims abound that it will control over 50% of the DRAM market in the near future. Rambus is always the memory that in the future will dominate the market.
So Rambus did not ship in huge volume last year. Rambus will ship in modest volume this year. Amidst this, Rambus decides to sue one DRAM company for patent infringement on a standard DRAM product/memory interface and ultimately to sue one of its customers. Rambus has generated great press uproar with the filing of two lawsuits. There is, or course, no relation to the fact that Sega is a competitor of Sony (who has designed in Rambus in its latest game system).
The interesting allegations in the Hitachi response regard the Rambus patents and coincidentally when information in JEDEC was discussed. By the rules of JEDEC membership, Rambus was required to disclose pending patent applications. The following paragraphs from the Hitachi filing explain the situation well.
"Rambus' failure to disclose its pending patent applications was only the iceberg's tip of its misconduct in connections with the JEDEC standards-setting process. During JEDEC committee meetings, while Rambus remained silent about its patent applications, and its plan to file additional applications to attempt to cover the proposed standards, other JEDEC members and participants participated in good faith, and shared their technical information so that open industry standards could be developed."
"Rambus took advantage of the information it learned from the participants at the JEDEC committee meetings, and from the proposed standards then under discussion. Rambus used that information to revise secretly its then-pending but undisclosed patent applications and/or to prepare related additional applications to cover the very technology and potential standards being discussed by other JEDEC participants."
What Rambus did not realize - or chose to ignore - is that the lawsuits were viewed by most of the DRAM industry as being against all DRAM manufacturers. So while Rambus as singled out one DRAM manufacturer, it has really taken on the industry. It has challenged the very existence of JEDEC, the industry standards committee.
Understandably, an IP company must vigorously protect its only assets, successful designs. But in some respects Rambus reminds us a bit of the New Yorker trying to patent the tortilla.
Hitachi filed its response to both Rambus lawsuits in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. It is certainly worth reading. Instead of waging a media fight, Hitachi has stated the issues succinctly. Stay tuned for more.
Sherry L. Garber, Senior Vice President
semico.com
-- Carl |
