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

To: Don Green who wrote (51254)	8/26/2000 3:43:48 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi Don Green; Yesterday I estimated that there was something like $80 billion worth of SDRAM already produced that Rambus somehow failed to collect, say 1% royalties on. It turns out that I underestimated the magnitude of Rambus' apparent error. In addition to failing to collect royalties on the SDRAM makers, they also forgot to collect royalties on the SDRAM chipset makers. I would say that that probably doubles my estimate of the amount of money that Rambus somehow neglected to collect to about 1% of $160 billion, or about $1.6 billion. I've never personally known anyone who's made that expensive of an error. I mean, I've been late with projects, but never so late as to cost a company over a billion dollars. Do you suppose there will be a shareholder lawsuit to find out why the company was so slow in getting their SDRAM patents out? It seems like an IP company could have done it faster than 10 years. The other thing I'd like to know is why has the company taken so long to get these SDRAM royalties out of the industry? If the patent position is so clear, why not sue them all at once? And why did they let Hitachi get away without having to pay back royalties? This is all beginning to smell mighty funny to me. -- Carl P.S. Rambus - the bumbling company that let billions of dollars worth of SDRAM and associated chipsets be produced for six years without them being paid any royalties, thereby missing the bulk of the big SDRAM production years, failing to take advantage of their intellectual property, and blowing their fiduciary duties to their shareholders.