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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (51761)	8/29/2000 3:33:13 PM
From: IceShark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

I think the JEDEC issue may hold water and Rambo sandbagged the group. This is where the anti-trust biz comes in. We shall see where this leads. The patents themselves are a somewhat separate issue and have quite a few paths to follow. MU's position will no doubt be that the patents are invalid and even if they are valid are unenforceable due to JEDEC. If you are a potential infringer you can't just sue a patent holder to try and get the courts to clear the path for you. The patent holder has to first put you on notice. Then you can sue. I'm sure MU suspected a suit may be coming down the road but they took action first for various reasons. Such as timing, selection of venue, etc. So this is a backwards suit where the plaintiff is really the defendant, and it happens not infrequently in patent litigation. Too early to really judge the merits unless you are on the inside.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (51761)	8/29/2000 3:35:58 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Ten, I was not in on those JEDEC meetings and also I am not familiar with what the process and informal agreements during that period which seems to be 1993 to 1995. But here is what I have gathered. (It would be interesting to hear from someone who was actually there at the time.) 1) RAMBUS is a pure IP company and all the JEDEC companies must have known or should have known that fact. 2) It is not clear that JEDEC had well formed policies during that period of time. In fact, it looks like their policies were undergoing change because a manual was introduced containing new procedures relating to patents. So if they had policies or practices they were not wriiten down. Incidently, it is common practice to publish articles in the trade press with new innovations that are in patent pending process. Frequently, this results in copying by the industry and the patent licensing years later after the patents issue. A "patent pending" notice does not entail a disclosure of thae actual subject matter of the patent with any precision. So the JEDEC complaint smells fishy.... 3) No one disputes that JEDEC members did and could collect patent royalties from other JEDEC members. In fact, Texas Instruments was collecting large royalties on its own DRAM patents and suing lots of foreign companies to enforce its patents. 4) It is not clear that RAMBUS had any legal duty to disclose patents in process. It seems at the time that RAMBUS was more focused on RDRAM as the choice for future scalable memory systems and had discarded the DDR as a stop gap and non scalable memory component. 5) In 1996 Intel picked RDRAM as it choice for a scalable memory solution after a full year of evaluation. RAMBUS was clearly betting on RDRAM and the issues of SDRAM and DDR were on the back burner. 6)The Rambus SDRAM and DDR patent claims did not issue until 1999 and early 2000. Like it or not that is OK within the existing patent law. 7) there are 8 patents being challenge out about 90 patents issued and another 90 patents in process of application. 8)http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000829/tc/micron_rambus_1.html ``designed to exact essentially nonnegotiable licenses bearing exorbitant royalties from these manufacturers.'' Micron seems to be objecting to the royalty rate. 1-2% is hardly an exorbitant royalty. .5% per patent infringed is not unusual in the semiconductor industry. It looks like they are complaining about RAMBUS holding all the patents and about having to pay exorbitant patents. They simply do not want to share the memory businees with a new gorilla. JMO