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

To: richard surckla who wrote (57252)	10/10/2000 3:24:33 AM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Richard, Dan3 would never pay for any patent he used. He would consider it blackmail. <G> Have you considered the death penalty for patent infringers?

To: richard surckla who wrote (57252)	10/10/2000 4:53:01 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93625

Re: , fair enough! But then again, On the contrary, what Rambus did wasn't engineering, it was a swindle. Rambus negotiated with and "supported" a number of companies for 9 years regarding it's RDRAM while submarining a patent application to cover different products those same companies were first developing and later investing in production facilities for. And Rambus was well aware of the design of those "industry standard" products, and the RAM companies were well aware that Rambus knew the details of those designs. But Rambus never included SDRAM or DDR in the discussions. Why didn't Rambus offer to license SDRAM or DDR? The final patents hadn't been granted on RDRAM, yet Rambus, employing the misdirection favored by pickpockets and muggers everywhere, kept all eyes on RDRAM. That's what a swindle is. Courts in the United States keep the notion of equity pretty high up on the agenda. This isn't specifically about IP law, it's about the way our Judicial system works and how our Judges tend to rule. Judges in the United States (with some exceptions) usually favor the spirit of the law rather than the letter in those rare cases where the two don't agree. My wife is a commercial litigator and I've hear the details of 20 years of cases. Generally the letter and the spirit of the law line up, but when they don't, in general, the Judges rule on the spirit. My wife is a real believer in the rule of law, and she is as disappointed when she wins one she thinks she should have lost, as she is if she loses on she should have won (well, almost). But most Judges go for equity rulings, almost every time. Even if Rambus has the letter of the law behind it, it will probably lose. Rambus submarined that patent while in supposedly good faith negotiations with the RAM companys. The spirit of the law is that, if Rambus never hinted that it had IP that covered SDRAM or DDR while these companies made multi-billion dollar investments in those technologies, then Rambus was sending a pretty clear message that its patents weren't applicable. And the letter may well be against Rambus as well. I would think that they had duty to disclose. To not do so would be fraud. I expect a Judge to either throw out the patent completely, give a permanent license to any company that Rambus had marketed its RDRAM to (but not the SDRAM application), or, at the minimum, give the RAM companies a 2 to 3 year royalty free grace period to remove the offending patent. And if the RAM companies don't get it from the first Judge, they'll appeal and get it from another one. Micron has already made clear its intention of collecting from Rambus the costs associated with developing SDRAM and DDR and equipping Micron's FABs to produce them. In the case of a fraud, incidental and consequential damages can be collected. What's Rambus worth after paying $2 billion to Micron for wasting 4 years of product and manufacturing development? Infineon has made clear its position that if the Rambus patent is broad enough to cover SDRAM, then it is already covered by prior Infineon art. Rambus has two ways to lose this case, and has put itself in a position where there is nothing marketable about the company except that patent. As this becomes more and more clear to the market, the stock will probably continue to decline. The failure of RDRAM as a large scale solution is obvious. Intel is developing DDR chipsets for P4 and the .13 P3, and nobody but Intel is developing RDRAM chipsets for any volume PC application - RDRAM alone supports a stock price no higher than $1 or $2. So the lawsuit is all there is to Rambus. If the lawsuit has multiple failure modes, it will be heavily discounted by investors. Where is the bottom on this stock? $30? $10? Dan