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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dan3 who wrote (39050)	3/29/2000 3:14:00 PM
From: pompsander	Respond to of 93625

Whoa, Dan, be careful in your fraud in the inducement argument. It may work when some sales guy sells you a T.V. that won't do what he said it would, but when you get up to multi-billion dollar companies with squads of lawyers looking over every word of every contract and asking about every possible interpretation, it is very very tought to argue that "my hundreds of lawyers and I didn't know what we were signing". It won't fly and a court will just snort and tell Hitachi to hire better lawyers in the future. I don't know if the patent claims are any good...but I am amazed by Hitachi's lousy defense. Man, they are practically admitting violation of the patent itself....."yes, your honor, I killed him, but I didn't know the gun was loaded". Hey, you are still guilty of something.

To: Dan3 who wrote (39050)	3/29/2000 3:26:00 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Dan, I doubt Hitachi would have signed any agreement with Rambus that would require them pay to Rambus royalties on products they had developed without Rambus help and had been selling for years. Hitachi signed their contract with Rambus in 1992 according to Geoff Tate (at the annual meeting). Since the SDRAM products didn't begin shipping until the mid-90s (1996 in PCs), Hitachi could not have been selling any of these products "for years" when they signed the contract. Dave

To: Dan3 who wrote (39050)	3/29/2000 3:38:00 PM
From: jim kelley	Respond to of 93625

I am aware of "fraud in the inducement" but that is not what one of Hitachi' defenses. So it is irrelevant. Hitachi apparently signed the license agreement and then used the technology in the SH series of microcontrollers instead of RDRAM and RDRAM controllers. Another interesting point is that Hitachi could have informed RAMBUS that its position was that its patents were but instead it waited for 5 years to disclose they were using RAMBUS patents. So having gotten caught Hitachi then crys foul. <LOL> It has been pointed out many times that already that SDRAM came into production about 4 to 5 years after the RAMBUS patents were filed. So there is no fraud here. The patent office will not allow a company/person to add features to an already filed patent application. The Patent office will only allow them to develop their claims language such that it delineates the scope of the invention and to develop its expository material to help delineate the scope of the invention and how it can be built. Hitachi' claims are far fetched. To prove bad faith on the part of RAMBUS, one would have to find that they suppressed information relating to prior art or perhaps concurrent art in their disclosure or that they listed the wrong inventors on the patent. :)