Hi all; Watzman comments on Rambus:
Re: Request for info from informed longs
Watzman, Yahoo Rambus thread #378881,378886 , May 17, 2002
Ok, I'll take a stab at it.
I see two fronts, market and legal.
The legal front is awaiting several very specific events:
-Report from the German expert. Could come at any time; expected to come by 6/30. Is definitive if it goes against Rambus, but is not definitive if it goes for Rambus (e.g. it can hurt us more than it can help us). In my opinion (this is HIGHLY subjective) the odds are 60/40 that it will be in our favor.
-European Union Patent Office hearings: This is scheduled for early fall (I believe that the date is set, but I don't have it -- however it's between August and October). This will be important and equally definitive in either direction. I think that we have a better than even, but not overwhelming, chance of a favorable ruling.
-German court decision: Not sure what the time frame currently is. But I'd be surprised if the court made a ruling before both their own expert evaluation and the EU patent office rulings were in.
-US Court of Appeals "trial" (oral arguments) -- June 3rd (firm date), but the ruling doesn't come out for months later, possibly not even until sometime next year (although my feeling is that we will see it in the fall, and as someone who has January 50 options, I certainly hope so, because I'm dead otherwise). We MAY get a "feeling" for how the court is leaning by the questioning at the hearing. We won't even know who the judges are until the morning of the hearing.
-Appeals Court Markman ruling -- Terribly important, perhaps definitive, but I'm not sure when this comes out. I'd thought that it MIGHT come out BEFORE the oral arguments.
-If the appeals court doesn't uphold the Va. court ruling, the most likely outcome would be to remand part of the case back to the district court for retrial with changed groundrules (in particular, a definitive Markman -- and one that probably changed IF the case is remanded at all). Then we'd have another 6-12 months in principle, but with "the writing on the wall", one way or the other, a settlement would become likely.
-***IF*** the Court of Appeals throws out the SDRAM fraud conviction and gives Rambus a favorable Markman ruling, make no mistake about it, Rambus has won. Not saying that this will happen, it would be about the best outcome we could possibly hope for.
-There are trials in CA (Hynix) and DE (Micron) that are on hold. They will take their cue from the outcome of the Appeal.
-What happens with the FTC and the shareholder lawsuits will also depend on the outcome of the appeal, in the end.
-Make no mistake about this, if the appeals court upholds everything that Judge Payne did, Rambus may be in really deep doo-doo from the FTC and the shareholder lawsuit.
Market
The market situation is puzzling and troubling. The superiority of RDRAM seems clear to me. Intel's position seems illogical and inexplicable. They are NOT being "agnostic", they are being anti-Rambus, when it seems clear that Rambus is the BEST solution, and when all of the arguments against it -- including cost -- have pretty much evaporated. I would LOVE to know what's going on, but I don't, and I can find ****NO**** logical explanation for what's happening.
However, as CPU speeds continue to increase, the superiority of RDRAM will become more and more undeniable.
I'm not sure how this will play out.
I'm also not sure how Yellowstone, Raser and the other non-memory technologies will play out. I think that there is POTENTIAL there for a win 2-3 years out, but certainly no assurance. Time will tell.
I can see this ending in a whole bunch of ways:
-Payne is totally upheld, RDRAM doesn't grow, the non-memory technologies never really take off, the FTC sues on anti-trust, and the combination of the FTC and shareholder lawsuits bankrupt the company (yes, I can see this although I don't think it's likely).
-Payne is significantly, if not completely, reversed, Rambus is able to assert legal ownership of DDR (and possibly SDRAM), RDRAM's superiority finally becomes so compelling that it acheives market dominance (in 2003 or 2004), on top of which Raser and Yellowstone become significant or even dominant, and the stock ends up surpassing it's previous all-time high (145 after hours, or I think 127 during market hours and 123 close).
-And, obviously, anything in between is possible (which says, really, absolutely nothing).
So that's how I see things.
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-- Carl
P.S. I'm not posting this because I agree with it, but instead simply because it is a well written and only 90% delusional bull case for Rambus. |
