Hi Dave B; In addition to phielman_'s comments I'd like to add my own to this issue (that of the value of IP).
We can imagine a "Zeev Hed" world where all products infringe on all patents, and patent holders rule the day. That would not be a world I would prefer to the current one, nor is it one where Rambus would have had any particular advantage.
Any major memory maker has more patents on DRAM than Rambus, and more significant patents. All they'd have to do is split off their IP from the mother company, get out of the (unprofitable) memory business in the next downturn, and make big coin from their IP houses.
It's a way of doing business, and the world would go on, but it's not an efficient way of running an economy. It would be rule by lawyer, and what's worse, it wouldn't even be predictable.
Huge fortunes would be made and loss on esoteric patent regulations and the nuances of words like "bus", LOL!!! What kind of world would that be? I'd rather see a world where companies competed with each other on the basis of the best technology.
If we were to go to a world where a knowledge of obscure patent regulations determined the winners, I would win in that world. In fact, I'd make a boat load more money than I make in this more fair world we do inhabit. But I don't like to see people and companies rewarded for other people's work and that was what Rambus was trying to do. (A jury and U.S. Federal court agree with my interpretation of the events here, so take the paranoid Rambus dementia about how they invented SDRAM and tell it to a Bilow in the alternate, Rambus fantasy, universe..)
-- Carl |
