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


To: jim kelley who wrote (56316)10/3/2000 12:09:47 AM
From: richard surckla  Respond to of 93625
 
jim... Like I said in one of my earlier posts, "Rambus has all the nuts!"



To: jim kelley who wrote (56316)10/3/2000 12:43:59 AM
From: Zeev Hed  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 93625
 
I thought the EU patent application was in 1991 ( a year after the US Application). In Europe and Japan, applications are open at once before examination, and any interested party can file a "friend of the court" type of objection., as far as I know.

Zeev



To: jim kelley who wrote (56316)10/3/2000 2:07:27 AM
From: jim kelley  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 93625
 
The Chronology of Rambus updated:

This is now laughable IMHO. JEDEC members are digging their own grave. Hitachi VP was suspicious but took no actions by his own accord!

1)Hitachi VP is suspicious but takes no action other than
getting busy implementing the Rambus IP in their SH-series microprocessors.

2)They did not look up patent numbers.

3)They did not do patent research in Europe where the Rambus patents are published in 1991. The European patent EP0525068 was publicly available since 10/18/1991.

4)Rambus signed no agreements with JEDEC and was known to be an IP only company. JEDEC did not have a written policy on IP at the time Rambus joined.

5) Rambus voted once at JEDEC and that was against the adoption of their one of the features of their IP.

6)Other members of JEDEC did not disclose their patents.

7)Hitachi, Intel and other companies were licensing IP from
RAMBUS as early as 1992 and continued to license
through 1996 under NDA agreements.

8)MU does not contest patents at all but bases entire case on JEDEC. Not only that as a remedy it wants RAMBUS to pay its DDR development costs. <hehe>



To: jim kelley who wrote (56316)10/3/2000 2:36:38 AM
From: Dan3  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 93625
 
Re: RMBS signed nothing and was known to be an IP only company

Trouble is, they didn't sign nothing as you claim. Nor did they refrain from discussions of the applicability and licensing of their IP. They signed contracts licensing their applicable memory patents to companies known by Rambus to be participants in the JEDEC standards. These contracts clearly stated that Rambus IP covered RDRAM. Rambus knew that the companies with which it was contracting were ramping up SDRAM and working on DDR and no claims were made regarding the applicability of any Rambus IP to SDRAM or DDR when Rambus contracting with the RAM manufacturers. There is a very strong implication here that Rambus IP didn't cover SDRAM or DDR. If Rambus IP did cover SDRAM or DDR, why wasn't an offer to license that IP proposed during the contracting of RDRAM licenses? Why no attempt to sell those products?

The overall controlling characteristic of English common law is the notion of equity. The behavior of the RAM manufacturers would have been very different had they not been convinced by the words and behavior of Rambus that SDRAM and DDR were not considered by Rambus to be covered by Rambus IP.

Rambus presented its IP as covering RDRAM but not applicable to SDRAM or DDR throughout its negotiations with the RAM manufacturers during the years in which SDRAM and DDR standards were established.

If the decision is that Rambus IP does cover SDRAM or DDR, an equitable court decision might give the RAM industry a reasonable period in which they could continue to produce SDRAM and DDR, say until 2003, after which time they would either have to contract with Rambus to use its IP, or design around that IP.

An even more equitable decision, (IMHO) would be to make that a permanent royalty free license for those products that Rambus fraudulently presented to the industry as not being, in Rambus's opinion, covered by Rambus IP.

Dan