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To: substancep who wrote (33970)	10/28/2000 4:21:34 PM
From: tinkershaw	Respond to of 54805

How realistic is it to assume that RMBS would follow thru on the threat of not licensing to those they battle in court? In the short to medium term, at least until the patent issues are as settled as QCOM's and GMST's seem to be, expect absolutely no deviation from this threat. To be credible Rambus can give no exceptions, and this is the expectations that Rambus has communicated to the analysts. Rambus can afford to put a Micron or two out of business. Of course if it was a Samsung or Intel things might be different. In regard to antitrust violations, indeed one should always be humble in business (with the exception of Naveen Jain of Infospace of course). But a patent is a legal right to monopolise. The only antitrust violation would be if RMBS were to use its patents to leverage itself into non-patentable markets (like MSFT uses Windows for). Rambus could decide to license nothing and produce it all itself if it wanted to. Or Rambus can pick and choose who it wants to be licensees, play favorites, charge different, discriminating rates. Instead what Rambus has done is much less. They will license to anyone who agrees to produce only when certified by Rambus, and to anyone who does not lose in court to Rambus in regard to the patents (Rambus insures standardization like ARMHY does with its core, and does utilize its patents as a means to gain the upper hand in any legal battle regarding their validity) and Rambus does price discriminate to a degree (again generally around first to sign lower royalty rate agreements). The antitrust charge that Rambus is charging more for DDR than RDRAM is kind of nonsensical given that if Rambus owns the underlying patents it could legally, and unilaterally decide it did not want to license DDR at all. Tinker