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

To: NightOwl who wrote (49611)	8/13/2000 4:49:55 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi NightOwl; Re money losing companies paying royalties anyway... The Rambus royalties would only increase the price of memory slightly, so I really don't think they would have much effect on the industry. That would likely cause a tiny decrease in its use, as consumers choose alternative technologies (like embedded). Basically, the price of memory already fluctuates more than 2% almost on a weekly basis. The Rambus royalty, while extremely lucrative for RMBS really isn't terribly significant to the industry as a whole. Everybody will just raise their prices accordingly. But there is no question that engineers prefer solutions that do not involve the complications of royalties, so maybe Rambus picking up royalties from everybody who uses SDRAM will lead to a faster advance to the new non-Rambus solution that the Advance Memory people are working on. -- Carl

To: NightOwl who wrote (49611)	8/13/2000 5:37:52 PM
From: Barry A. Watzman	Respond to of 93625

Night owl, on the first point, I agree with you. On the second point, standards come from lots of places. No one -- not JEDEC, not Intel, not Microsoft -- has AUTHORITY to set standards. In truth, the marketplace sets standards, which may start out as (or even remain) proprietary, and then, sometimes, the "standards bodies" ratify them. Sometimes after the fact. I don't know where future standards are coming from. Neither does anyone else. By the way, the TI patent situation was much more recent than your assumption. It was just developing while I worked for TI, and that was 89 to 91. I think that some of those patents may STILL be in effect, and that TI may still be collecting royalties from them.