Hi blake_paterson; Re Rambus' DDR claims...
(A) None of this matters unless the Markman decision is reversed, as Rambus' patents are for multiplexed bus DRAM chips and neither SDRAM nor DDR are of that type.
(B) Even if the Markman is reversed, the memory maker lawyers may argue that the attributes that DDR shares with SDRAM are off limits for Rambus royalties because DDR includes those features as a compatibilty between it and SDRAM. In other words, that part of the DDR spec does date to when Rambus was a member, as far as the ability of Rambus to collect royalties on it goes. I don't know how the legal system will rule on that, but run it by NicDaGreek, will ya?
The other thing is that the Rambus claims that (allegedly) covered DDR but didn't cover SDRAM were the weakest of the four, and were ruled out by the judge first.
The Infineon trial reduced itself to the following four claims:
(1) Re SDRAM and DDR: Programmable latency.
(2) Re SDRAM and DDR: Programmable block transfer size.
(3) Re DDR only: DLL use.
(4) Re DDR only: Both edges of clock.
The DDR only claims were thrown out by the judge first. Of those two, the last claim (both edges of clock) was silly, no court in the land is going to apply that to DDR. The Rambus clocking scheme at that time was quite unique, nothing like DDR at all.
As far as claims against DDR that avoid also being claims against SDRAM, the only one with a chance is the DLL claim. Ask NicDaGreek to take a look at that one. And tell that guy that there is no way that the industry is going to use RDRAM as a standard, (as he'd know if he followed my posts on SI, LOL!)
-- Carl |
