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

To: Dan3 who wrote (49606)	8/13/2000 2:54:14 PM
From: Barry A. Watzman	Respond to of 93625

Dan3, that's not necessarily true .... The OEM does care. Because if there is an infringement suit, the OEM can be made a co-defendant, and the OEM's products can be confiscated. We don't know what happened in the Hitachi case, but it's a good example: Sega WAS made a co-defendent. And if an injunction, restraining order or judgement had occured, you could have had the spectre of US Marshals going into Toys 'R Us stores in October (before Christmas) and impounding or even confiscating/destroying all Sega game systems. The same thing is possible with Compaq, HP, etc. if they use memory made by a company -- for example -- Infineon -- which is the subject of a Rambus lawsuit. If Rambus wins, or even if the are still in litigation but get an injunction -- all of the products of any OEM containing the disputed memory can be confiscated (destroyed if it's a final judgement rather than an intermediate injunction). So the previous post had merit. The OEM DOES care about where the memory came from and the relationship of the memory maker with Rambus. And may choose to pay (2%) more to avoid a business risk of, at the very least, a business interruption in the event of a decision that goes against the memory maker.