John, be careful there, the Constitution grants inventors the right to exclude others and be monopolistic for a period of 20 years from filing (in order to promote "progress ... etc.) Under some rare circumstances, once a company has already achieved a monopolistic position (like Xerox at the time), then you can go after them to force them to license, in this case, Hitachi has nowhere to hide, they were offered a license and turned it down. The only course of action (which they are taking together with many of the DRAM manufacturers) is to try and prove that RMBS' intellectual property was in the public domain before they filed their patents (actually more than a year before that date, I believe), or that the technology is "obvious". It sure cannot be shown it is obvious, if it was, there would not be so many difficulties implementing it, so the only other avenue, IMHO, is proving prior art.
Zeev |
