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

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (44493)	6/16/2000 12:51:00 AM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Well, marketing won out after all! Toshiba could not pass up the opportunity to exploit the development of the next memory standard, whatever it turns out to be.

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (44493)	6/29/2000 6:37:00 PM
From: Barry Grossman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Barry, And you continue to be right. Nice post. Don't you love US anymore? Barry messages.yahoo.com Patent office crazy, BUT by: Watzman 6/29/00 1:50 pm Msg: 127290 of 127423 The patent office has issued some crazy patents -- the worst was probably the "one-click checkout" patent issued to Amazon.com. Another bad one has to do with smart card readers. A guy has a patent on "if the read fails, wiggle the card and try it again" to deal with possibly dirty card contacts (applies only to motorized card readers in ATM machines and similar devices). THAT PATENT HAS BEEN TESTED IN COURT AND HELD UP. All of that said, the Rambus patents are on hardware and I think are unique and valid. And, I must admit, that the BT patent on Hypertext links may be valid also. I know that seems crazy now, in an Internet world in the year 2000. But the patent was applied for in 1989, BEFORE the World Wide Web and HTML existed. It is NOT an "obvious" invention in the context of a world that had NEVER seen web browsers, HTML or a graphics-based internet. That's part of the trouble with acceptance of the Rambus patents that people are having also. People have been using SDRAM as the primary computer memory since about 1996, now Rambus comes in with it's patents and people yell "thief". In reality, however, the Rambus patents on which SDRAM infringe were developed in 1989 and 1990, and the patent was applied for in 1990. However, outside of Rambus' own internal research labs, the memory did not exist until 1993, and was not a major commercial factor until 1996. It's easy to say now, in 2000, that this technology seems both obvious and ubiquitous. But that was NOT the case in 1989 and 1990 when the invention was made. All of this would have been less of a problem if Rambus had started collecting royalties from the beginning, e.g. if they had started collecting royalties between 1993 and 1996. Unfortunately, however, while the patent was applied for in 1990, it was not issued until 1999, and you can't demand royalties until the patent is actually issued, the application date (which DOES govern infringement) not withstanding. Our patent system (the entire world's patent system, in fact) gives ALL rights to the FIRST entity to do something. Thus, even if other firms developed SDRAM on their own without Rambus' help in 1993, it doesn't matter. Rambus did it FIRST, in 1989 and 1990, therefore they "own it" for 20 years, and anyone else who does it later, even if they did it entirely on their own, does in fact imfringe the Rambus patents and does owe Rambus royalties. That's the way the system works, like it or not.