Hi all; Rambus employee says their patents didn't cover SDRAM, as far as he knew:
The employee, Richard Crisp, was deposed by Infineon, who then used his testimony in support of their version of the Markman claim construction. Basically, what Infineon is arguing is that since Rambus' patent claims from 1990 and 1992 did not cover SDRAM, the patent office was wrong in allowing Rambus to expand those patents through continuations to cover SDRAM after SDRAM was already invented. During the third day of oral arguments on Markman (unavailable, otherwise I'd type it in), Infineon apparently argued that there was no way that competitors to Rambus should have known that Rambus' patents included SDRAM, since their own employees at the time didn't know it did. In support of this, Infineon cited testimony from one of Rambus' own employees, Richard Crisp. Rambus apparently argued at the time that the citation was out of context, and promised to put together a brief explaining the full context of the testimony. Here's the order allowing Rambus to do just that, followed by the full testimony as put into the record by Rambus:
Docket 149 ORDER
It is hereby ORDERED that:
1) by 5:00 PM on March 2, 2001, Plaintiff Rambus shall file its five page brief regarding deposition testimony of Richard Crisp and Paul Farmwald and shall be limited to references from those depositions;
...
rambusite.com
From Rambus' "five page brief", where they have to disown the testimony of their own (ex) employee:
Docket 151: Plaintiff Rambus Inc.'s Post-Markman Hearing Designation of Deposition Testimony of Dr. P. Michael Farmwald and Mr. Richard Crisp
I. INTRODUCTION
pursuant to the Court's permission granted on February 28, 2001, during Infineon's closing arguments on the third and final day of the Markman hearing [Markman hearing was February 26-28, see Dockets 141, 143, 148] on claim construction in this case, Rambus, Inc. ("Rambus") hereby designates certain testimony of Dr. Paul Michael Farmwald and Mr. Richard Crisp in rebuttal to excerpts of their testimony cited by Infineon.
Dr. Farmwald is one of the named inventors of the patents in suit. Mr. Crisp, on the other hand, was simply a Rambus employee through 1996.
...
III Mr. Crisp's Deposition Excerpts Cited by Infineon
Under Tabs 7 and 8 of Infineon's Exhibit DTX 719, are two passages from the deposition testimony of Mr. Richard Crisp. Mr. Crisp's testimony is not directed to any claim of any Rambus patent. Instead, he was being asked to reconstruct his recollection from 1994 based on a copy of an e-mail that was presented to him. Mr. Crisp's testimony is extrinsic to say the least, but if the testimony is to be considered at all by this court, then perhaps his statements should be taken in the context of the entire conversation. Attached, Rambus designates page 455, line 19 through page 458, line 18, where Mr. Crisp admits to not being an attorney, and more importantly, points out that his understanding of the claimed combinations set forth in the claims of Rambus patents was incorrect, based on the claimed combinations that were subsequently granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO").
It is important to note that Mr. Crisp's association with Rambus ended in 1996, years before the claimed combination of elements at issue in this litigation were filed with the PTO. Accordingly, his testimony might be directed (and this is only speculation since his testimony is unclear) to specific claimed combinations, he is certainly not testifying, in an informed capacity, as to any claimed combination of the patent in suit. Moreover, his statements, if at all relevant to this litigation, are probably directed to claims as a whole (i.e. all of their limitations in combination) and not to any particular claim term. If the statements excerpted by Infineon could somehow be tied to the Rambus patents, they certainly cannot be tied to the claimed combination of features that are found in the claims at issue in this litigation. Mr. Crisp's testimony is so far departed from any relevant information on which the court is allowed to rely, that Rambus submits it is not worthy of more comment.
rambusite.com
In other words, Rambus' own employee was unaware that Rambus had patent coverage on SDRAM. Given this, how could a competitor possibly know? One of the requirements of patents is that they be specific enough that they announce to the world what isn't included in them. For more on this subject, see:
idea.fplc.edu
The depositional testimony at issue: ("Q" is the Infineon lawyer, "A" is Richard Crisp. "Rambus" is the Rambus lawyer, who objects to a few of the questions.)
November 8, 2000, Deposition of Richard Crisp
Q. What was the date of the E-mail?
A. The date of the E-mail? May 27, 1994.
Q. And how do you know you had a claim that was added to cover that configuration?
A. I don't know how I knew that. I just think I just generally heard that or something. Mark was busy doing a lot of design and was, I think, having a lot of cases that were being filed with our -- in our patent area. I just wanted him to make sure that he was aware of that.
Q. Whose patent was it that you were referring to?
A. I believe I was referring to a Rambus patent.
Q. Which inventors?
A. I really don't know. I don't remember. As I said, I think I remember hearing that there was a claim about that in one of our patents.
Q. When you were at JEDEC, did you mention to JEDEC that you had a claim that covered SDRAM?
A. Oh, I didn't think that I had a claim that covered SDRAMs. I just was -- in every case I was always looking at this from the perspective of our device with the narrow bus and the packet oriented configuration.
Q. The note refers to SDRAMs.
A. Yes, I understand that, and my belief is that as time went on that this would be important because I think that people would have to move away from the SDRAM architectural configuration to something more like what we had developed.
Q. Is it your opinion that the Rambus patents do not cover SDRAMs?
Rambus Objection, it's vauge and ambiguous. It's compound. It's calling for opinion, expert opinion, legal opinion. I'm not sure it's worth much, but go ahead.
A. At the time when I wrote this, I believed that we were limited to the configurations that we had disclosed in our patents, which were shared data and address lines and packet oriented bus, narrow high speed clock devices, signals moving in opposite directions on the clocks. That was my belief at the time.
Q. Has your belief changed or is that still your belief?
Rambus: Same objections.
A. My belief has changed since then.
Q. What is your belief now?
Rambus: Same objections. It's calling for opinion, expert, legal opinion. It's vague, but go ahead
A. I'm sorry, would you ask the question again?
Q. What is your opinion now?
Rambus: Same objections.
A. My opinion now is that the inventions were much broader in scope than I believed originally.
Q. How did you arrive at that opinion that you hold today?
Rambus: Same objections. Go ahead.
A. I'm not sure exactly how. I guess because of the fact that we had some claims that have now been issued as part of new patent applications that covered those configurations, so since they were allowed, I assume that they must be valid. Again, I'm not a lawyer.
rambusite.com
-- Carl |
