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

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (49511)	8/12/2000 8:34:09 PM
From: Steve Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Re: "Until July, I never saw ANYTHING indicating publicly that Intel would offer any memory solution for the P4 with any memory other than RDRAM, and, indeed, continued to see Intel support for RDRAM and RDRAM exclusively." Barry, Here is an article from Jack Robertson dated January this year, quoting Intel announcing that Foster will support DDR: techweb.com Hopefully, this will put a cease to the whining from Robertson fans Bilow and Scumbria too about this being "recent news" from a July 2000 Intel announcement. Try to spin this one Bilow and reconcile it with your posts to me over the last few days. Could make for some good entertainment.

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (49511)	8/12/2000 10:33:08 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Barry, What frequently happens in patent cases like this is that multiple defendants are not named. Rather deals are struck to settle pending the outcome say of the Infineon case. The only problem with this type of arrangement is that Infineon ends up paying for the entire battle and the other companies have to set up risk reserves pending the outcome. If they fund risk reserves pending the outcome of the case they are getting hit anyway. So given the size of the liabilities it make more sense for these companies to settle and sign licenses. This clouds their future and their business plans for a long time if they chose to go to war. I would think that RAMBUS is sitting down across the conference table and allowing each company to present any defenses it may have that might show RAMBUS' claims to be invalid. Barring a strong and credible defense to each claim that is infringed, they should settle. Otherwise they will surely lose in Federal court. If RAMBUS does encounter a credible defense to the infringement of one of their claims, I would expect RAMBUS to drop that claim. The problem is that RAMBUS has 90 issued patents and hundreds of claims, so that even if a few of the infringement claims drop others will likely stick. So the prospect of these companies escaping the patents is extremely remote. Only one claim has to be infringed for RAMBUS to win in court and there are hundreds of RAMBUS claims. JK

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (49511)	8/13/2000 12:55:41 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Barry A. Watzman, You Sir are a rare bird indeed. Its not often that I get a chance to read such rationally related thoughts in support of RMBS on this thread. And I mean that as no offense to others, just a comment on your skill with the King's English. Although I like the way you say it, I must disagree with most of your points. Most particularly disturbing to me is the inference they leave unstated, i.e., RMBS can gain a settlement with all the major DRAM fabs and live happily ever after. The problem I have with that inference is its implication for the the future of a strategic commodity business in which (1) profits are prone to deep cycles of boom and bust; and (2) the normal barriers to entry are extremely high. I would be very interested to know how you see the industry producers coping with a system in which they must pay real cash for IP at times when they are selling at a loss? And then there is the corresponding problem they have of needing agreement on a "standard" for design in order to actually produce this commoditized product that has become nearly as indispensable as cows milk. What do you see the arrival of the RMBS SDRAM/DDR IP claims doing to the memory standards activity of JEDEC? Obviously there are numerous alternative answers to both questions. If Alan Hume's post concerning the use of both clock edges as far back as the 70's, was in fact widely known or recognized by DRAM EE's between that time and the 1990's patents of RMBS, then I suspect that the comments of Bilow and others here regarding the customary art in this industry is likely the source of most of the RMBS IP for SDRAM/DDR. But having a strong legal argument is rarely a determining factor when it comes to large corporations making business decisions. Corporations don't stand for "legal principle", or even "legal" profit for that matter. Usually its simply "profit", any profit that decides an issue. Which I presume is why none of the IP shops inside MU, NEC, Samsung, etc... filed any patent interference proceedings when RMBS was awarded these patents initially. ...It seems nobody likes spending money on lawyers until they have to do so. Then again there are the Simplots of the world, but they don't hang on for ever. :8) I've got to get out of here now but I'd like to hear your ideas on these questions and hope you find them of interest. 0\|0

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (49511)	8/13/2000 3:02:04 AM
From: NightOwl	Respond to of 93625

P.S. To Barry A. Watzman, I have never thought, and still don't think, that there is ANY chance of FTC action against Rambus (an investigation, perhaps, but ending in the conclusion that there is no grounds for action). The Rambus pundits are trying to claim that the situation is similar to that with Dell and VESA, but it's not. First, Rambus never signed an agreement giving up patent rights, as Dell had done. But, more importantly, the patents were applied for 4-6 YEARS before the meetings in question occured. Thus, to claim that the subject of the patents is material that Rambus "stole" from the VESA meetings is, in my view, patently absurd (no pun intended). ********************* If as you say, they "didn't" sign away their patent rights, then why were they at the meetings? Did they not know what kind of organization JEDEC was in 1995 or when ever the meetings in question took place? And I thought the real pucker patent relating to the clock registers was established by an amendment to the 1990 original for which application was made post JEDEC meetings? 0\|0