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


To: tinkershaw who wrote (73177)5/17/2001 8:55:52 PM
From: Sully-  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 93625
 
Interesting POV on RMBS from the G&K thread......... Hope you don't mind tinker.......

To:Ali Chen
From: tinkershaw

Ali,
Kind of funny if all the major elements of Rambus inventions were created much earlier why the issue of "prior art" has never been put forward at trial nor has lack of novelty or obviousness been an issie. They certainly were not a part of the Infineon trial, it is not much if any part of the Micron trial. I hear all the time about how obvious everything was that Rambus invented yet I find a surprising lack of prior art on the topic. I was also very intrigued of how Infineon over a period of 3 years kept asking Rambus for more and more information about their inventions, even after Rambus basically said, "look, buy it or we shall stop sending you specs." At trial it came out this was because Infineon largely lacked any in-house IP regarding the creation of SDRAM, they were desperate for the help.

Also in regards to the Infineon suit. There are many justifiable rationale why Judge Payne may have decided to to limit the interpretation of Rambus patents so narrowly. Perhaps it has something to do with the history of the patent and how it was obtained. I don't know, and I am unaware of any evidence brought up at trial or in the Markman ruling which indicated that this was the basis of Judge Payne's decision.

However, looking at the law on the topic, absent these "file wrapper" elements, Judge Payne's interpretation and limitation of scope of Rambus patents to a multiplex bus seem (and this is just general law, applied generally to the Judge Payne's Markman decision, as I was not there and I do not know everything in the history of the patent file and I don't know what exactly Judge Payne used as his rationale), but in general, it is well established that the scope of a patent cannot be limited either by the "preferred embodiment" of the patent nor can it be additinally limited from making inferences from the specifications of the patent.

Absent some file wrapper element with Rambus' patents there is a very good chance the Markman rulings will be overturned on appeal. As absent these file wrapper elements it seems clear that Judge Payne did just these two things in his Markman opinion. If other factors were not at work, this was an erroneous decision by Judge Payne.

Until such a ruling is finalized on appeal I'll withhold my discussion of who invented necessary and fundamental elements that are involved with the current generation of SDRAM and DDR technologies.

In regard to the fraud element I'm still a bit perplexed with the decision the jury came to. I honestly don't exactly know what they based their decision on. Nevertheless, it is evidence that anything can happen when you get in front of the jury. I don't know what the chances are on appeal with the fraud count, and won't know until I give it a much deeper look to figure out exactly what happened on that count.

Tinker

Message 15816249
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To: tinkershaw who wrote (73177)5/17/2001 9:00:09 PM
From: Sully-  Respond to of 93625
 
One more interesting post about RMBS from the G&K thread......

To:Ali Chen who wrote (42760)
From: tinkershaw Thursday, May 17, 2001 5:49 PM
Respond to of 42770

<<Today we know
that the Rambus-1 has failed in PC market. Only after
7-year-long efforts from real manufacturers - Intel
and others - the Rambus memory was able to meet the
PC requirements.>>


That is the equivalent of saying that CDMA in 1996 was not able to meet the needs in the handset market. Which is ridiculous. Of course, in 1996, CDMA could have met the needs of the marketplace. It simply wasn't necessary at the time given the state of wireless technology at the time. Similarly RDRAM, even in its initial 500 Mhz format was not really necessary prior to reaching these Ghz speeds which are not becoming mainstream.

Heck, I'm typing on a Pentium II, 266 Mhz computer. RDRAM and high-bandwidth, and Ghz processors are still not necessary. Doesn't mean it won't be in everyone's box within a year.

<<In regard to the other theory: To fit it
into mass-manufactured PCs, the memory must meet
certain requirements: the channel must
be long enough to accommodate manufacturable packaging,
modules must be socketed, etc>>


Then how do you explain DDR which has so far proven as unstable as the initial 820 mislaunches and also due to inherent stability problems (which I'm sure will eventually be worked out, but not at the moment for mass market and certainly not for the corporate market this year anyways. Much less trying to get the DDR 266 working). Micron has certainly not seemed to have any problem trying to establish a non-standardized technology, for which compatible parts vary from manufacturer to manufacturer as the standard, and stuffing them in a box. In fact Micron had a monopoly on the DDR PC market for the past year, they ended up practically paying someone to take over their PC business and their DDR monopoly.

Tinker

Message 15816416
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