VG: Another view of the situation from Yahoo RMBS
First, what is the intent of a standards board ??? It should be to standardize the best product(s) so that consumers would benefit from that best product(s) that is then interchange able from the same product produced by many other manufacturers...consumers then would benefit from the cost advantages of having the same basic product available from many sources, all competing for the business of the consumer...
4. How about testimony at the FTC trial where the memory manufacturers were meeding outside of the SDO to decide what they would propose and support inside the SDO...where statements such as "JEDEC is our organziation and will standardize whatever we want" originated...
Second, you do of course understand that Patents are granted based on language that appears in the US Constituation...
That language authorizes Congress to make laws to enable the US Patent System...and makes no provision for a power hungry, politically biased, administrative agency to usurp the power that the US Constitution granted to Congress, and that Congress has placed in the USPTO and the Courts...
The FTC has no authority over legally obtained patents, what they are doing here is unprecedented and would never stand up to an appeal in a court of law...The FTC also has no authority to seek punishment, but that is exactly what they are doing by proposing a royalty free licensing of Rambus patents as a remedy...this is also unprecedented...
Rambus initial patent contained many inventions, some were recognized and claimed in the original patent, others were recognized later, but make no mistake the offshoot patents could not have been granted by the USPTO without the support for them already being in the original patent...
BTW, there was testimony at the FTC trial that compoments of DDR technology were present in Rambus original patent...this was testified to by an employee of one of the other JEDEC members...
Third, The CAFC (the highest patent court in the USA) has already ruled on this issue and decided that if they assumed that there was a disclosure obligation (they had to make an assumption, because the rules were so unclear, that in itself should tell you something) , that Rambus met that obligation by disclosing their only issued patent in the 1991/92 timeframe...
Many of these problems could have been avoided if JEDEC had done what many others SDO's had done...not require disclosure of IP...
This case has been a political sham from the very beginning...
The FTC has proven that they are a corrupt organization that does not deserve to exist in it's present form... The FTC officials who have allowed this to occur do not deserve to be Government officials...
We will see what the courts decide but methinks it is bad news for the bad guys. Just like IBM Sun Novell etc had to resort to the FTC and phony court claims so have the DRAM manufacturers, JFD
But for this to work, the SDO (standards development organization) must have firm rules in place so that direct competitors do not use the SDO to collude... Unfortunately, it appears that JEDEC did not follow any rules and allowed it's officials/members to do anything that they pleased...
Now some facts...Did you know these ???
1. Rambus was the ONLY company that was not allowed by JEDEC (the SDO) officials to present their own technology for possible standardization IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY of the SDO (this happened twice).
2.One of these denials was based on Rambus not giving assurances that they would charge a specific percentage royalty (the SDO is not allowed to specify royalty percentages, this would involve antitrust and is a function of negotiation and court rulings as to what is reasonable)...The official that issued the denial claimed that there was a rule change that said if the potential presenter did not agree to this that they could not present...and the rule change occurred at the very meeting and just prior to Rambus asking to present...But, strangely? there is no record of a rules change...not even in the meeting minutes...BTW, The official had previously testified that no rules change had ever occurred...AND that official had written in an IBM internal communication just two weeks prior that it's better for IBM that Rambus is not standardized, that if this didn't occur it would be business as usual for IBM...
2. How about an attorney who was an official of the SDO (general counsel) who claimed that when he discussed or wrote about the disclosure policy of the SDO and used the word Patents...that what he really meant was Patents, Patent Applications, and intentions to file new patents...
3. How about other officials of the SDO who came to the FTC courtroom to testify what the SDO's disosure duty was and who all claimed that Patents, Patent applications and intentions to file must be disclosed, who they themselves did not abide by those very "rules" that they had just testified to (Rambus' attorneys impeached these officials on cross over this issue)... |
