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

To: gnuman who wrote (47290)	7/16/2000 12:13:25 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Thanks for the ftp cite, I will certainly check it out, but I am sure the legal system has several ways of avoiding such idiotic injunctive "relief" while the litigation is pending. And I agree that this will likely be ancient history in three years. The 10 year estimate was my "conservative" measure of how long it would take for this to be litigated as a "death struggle" patent challenge, assuming it went from the PTO to the Supreme Court at least once. And an anti trust action starting at either the FTC or District Court, particularly in this area with practically an entire industry involved as a party or witness, could easily take just as long, barring a settlement. I don't think there's much chance any definitive resolution of these issues would be heard by the ITC. I will use your link to check its jurisdiction, but there seem to be too many US companies, US fabs and US OEMs involved to enable the ITC to provide a complete remedy. It looks like Hitachi may have agreed to settle simply to (a) avoid giving the ITC a chance to make any case law on the issues before its taken up by a normal administrative/judicial process; and (b) to get an actual agreement in which the amount of RMBS demands for SDRAM/DDR tribute are set out for use as future evidence. At the end of the day, its the amount of these demands that has to be the real crux of the matter. The Memory guys had better have a very good argument that they are out of line with the value of the IP involved. I have to figure they can do this. 0\|0

To: gnuman who wrote (47290)	7/16/2000 2:42:23 PM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Gene P, I checked out the rules and you are indeed right about the relevant sections. I also went to the statute 19 USC Sec. 1337 to see how the ITC's jurisdiction is described. Just based on the plain language used it would appear that it doesn't matter to the ITC if the parties to its actions are foreign or domestic. What seems to be required is an "importation" and a "sale" transaction. So if a Fab company, foreign or US owned, makes DDR/SDRAM in the US for sale in the US or for "export", the ITC would appear to be excluded from hearing any patent disputes involved. However, I would also assume that if you had a manufacturer who made SDRAM/DDR chips both inside and outside the country, you might be able to assert ITC jurisdiction over all the manufactures production activities, if a complaining party could assert that it is impossible to tell the US and foreign chips apart; or if it could establish that the foreign chips were in fact being sold in the US, as a "grey market" transaction. 0\|0