<Maybe you need to become a little more familiar how
the justice is done?
Also, what makes you think that "industry-accepted"
terms are clear enough to become "leaglly-accepted"?
If you really have read the court papers, you should
realize that the terminology was not simply "made up
to suit a judge" but was put through very serious legal
examination, and Rambus lost their arguments. >
The judge took IFX side and exclude RMBS argument on all points so that doesn't mean he used any 'through very serious legal examination'. Where did the judge quote the law he referenced? It was the judge's opinion. Opinion vs. reference law does not mean "through very serious legal
examination". That doesn't mean he is correct!
Also, the JEDEC didn't have any "industry-accepted" or in this case organization accepted rules for patent discloser that the members were following:
From the MF post #55732
The Court found that although "the
JEDEC manual did not explicitly provide, until 1993, that
pending patents were to be disclosed, Infineon presented
clear and convincing evidence at trial, through JEDEC
members and representatives, that, at all times at issue
before 1993, the duty to disclose applied to pending
applications."
Unless of course you are a big company like IBM. Notes from the trial:
fredhager.com Rambus vs. Infineon - Trial Notes:
May 4th and 7th
By Bill Teel
(snip)
In Meyer's testimony, he stated he did not rely on the written documents for JEDEC rules, but rather, what was stated at meetings. He testified that he did not see many of the revised manuals. It is our belief no one saw these manuals most of the time, and they were not sent to members when changes were made.
The issue of the change in policy was brought up, and it was made clear that the committee did state they were going to revise the manual to include patent applications. But, that change was only highlighted in two or three JEDEC meetings in the opening statements made at meetings. JEDEC meetings usually opened with an overhead display outlining the patent policy for members. These overhead displays were then attached to the minutes and distributed after the meetings.
From our perspective, Rambus' attorney accomplished the goal of proving the policy was not uniform throughout the history of JEDEC, while Rambus was there. While a draft of the new policy was showcased at a few meetings, and attached to the minutes, these drafts were later abandoned. While the draft was shown to JEDEC members in late 1992 and in 1993, and this draft did state that patent applications should be disclosed, the draft was ultimately replaced with the old version of the rules, which did not state anything about applications. The old version of the rule remained at meetings, and in minutes from 1993 to 1996, when Rambus left JEDEC.
Therefore, the policy was clearly not displayed, or conveyed consistently to members during Rambus' time in JEDEC. We believe these conflicting rules weaken the case against Rambus' dealings with JEDEC. If JEDEC changed the rule in 1993, and consistently showcased that change for members, than Rambus could be considered in the wrong. But, considering this never happened, and even the JEDEC JC42 (memory division) head, Gordon Kelley stated to JEDEC members that IBM would not disclose patent or patent applications to JEDEC, can Rambus be legally held accountable for not disclosing patents or applications. We think not.
So Gordon Kelley, an IBM employee and president of JEDEC's memory division, testified that Rambus was obligated to disclose all patent applications even though IBM never had and has no intention to in the future.
The inconsistent rules of JEDEC were further supported with the video testimony from Ken Magee, the past and current secretary of JEDEC. In Mr. Magee's testimony, he stated he didn't think the rules of JEDEC changed in the 1991-1993 timeframe. He also stated that he did not think the DDR standard-setting issues were discussed until just a few years ago, or after Rambus left JEDEC. While Infineon has attempted to impress upon the jury that Rambus was involved in many DDR-setting meetings, Mr. Magee, whose responsibility within JEDEC is to attend all meetings, believed it was not until 1997 that the DDR initiative was started. Mr. Magee stated that JEDEC only wanted to hear about patents that related to the topics being discussed at particular meetings, and he also confirmed that Texas Instruments, along with IBM disagreed with the patent policy.
Even if it was carved in stone that patent applications had to be disclosed it was JEDECs policy to only disclose applications that applied to a particular meeting. Therefore, since Rambus never attended any meetings where DDR was discussed they would not have had to disclose any pending apps even if that was the rules.
Finally, to his understanding, Mr. Magee believed Rambus left JEDEC because they could not agree with the patent policy, nor the licensing policy outlined by JEDEC.
Testimony from Victor Russell of Infineon further supported the notion that Richard Crisp was not the only person working on a laptop taking notes at JEDEC. According to Mr. Russell, about 90% of JEDEC members worked on their laptops during meetings. Russell also stated that he never saw Crisp vote, and Crisp didn't say much, if anything while attending meetings.
Gordon Kelley's testimony was divided between the work IBM did with Infineon (Siemens) on a DRAM effort, and his understanding of the JEDEC rules. There were several instances discussed in the testimony that seem to support our belief that Infineon was in gross violation of Rambus' non-disclosure agreement, and considering Kelley stated he attended meetings with Siemens where Siemens provided Rambus documents, some of which were marked, "confidential", we believe our thesis in this regard may be accurate. While violating the non-disclosure agreement between Infineon and Rambus is not at issue in this case, it seems to us that Rambus has a case in this regard.
All of the patents in the litigation are "RDRAM" patents. I confirmed this with Rambus' IR. There are no "SDRAM" and "DDR" patents. What this means is that certain aspects of RDRAM mysteriously appeared in SDRAM and DDR. So for those of you who still think Rambus ripped off JEDEC I'll ask the same questions again: If Rambus (Farmwald and Horowitz) didn't invent this stuff who did? What are their names? Who did they work for? When did they present it to JEDEC and was Rambus there when they did? If Farmwald and Horowitz didn't invent this stuff it should be really easy to prove. Yet, to date, no one has even tried to show that someone else invented it. If you're still not sure how Rambus technology got into SDRAM and DDR then reread the previous paragraph.
On more than one occasion, Mr. Kelley discussed meetings in which he sat in with Siemens executives and engineers to discuss memory and Rambus.
The "pros" and "cons" chart regarding the memory concepts the two companies were working on was discussed, and Kelley stated that he had conversations with Meyer about the possibility of infringement with regards to Rambus patents.
Regarding JEDEC, Kelley confirmed he wrote the appendix that stated the application disclosure policy, but did not confirm why that appendix was not continued to be included at meetings, or in minutes. According to Kelley, the rules of JEDEC were the same as that of the parent organization, the EIA. In that ruling, there is no rule on disclosure of applications.
Kelley confirmed Crisp approached him twice at JEDEC meetings about proposing a standard, but because Crisp and Rambus did not agree with the open-standard royalty-free policy, Meyer would not allow Crisp to present his proposal. Kelley did state that what is considered a reasonable royalty rate was up to the members to decide.
Kelley concluded by stating his belief that Rambus' was a threat because Rambus was fabless and there was no chance of cross licensing.
In other words they couldn't get something for nothing. On second thought, I guess they did after all.
Jackson
It's like the Supreme Court said, you can not convict someone/something of "conduct unbecoming" until you preciously spell out what that conduct is.
Thank You, |
