To: SBHX who wrote (79655 ) 11/9/2001 8:46:56 AM From: Dave Read Replies (2) | Respond to Scared,The FTC seems to have come out hard against any form of finessing strategy where a company hides their supposed patents while engaging such a body. If you look at the numbers alone, rambus initial demands for 5% royalties from companies having ddr controllers in their chips amounts to about half of their margins. This apparently amounts to a monopoly in the eyes of an FTC. But rmbs situation is certainly more tragic and allegedly more underhanded, since what emerged from the trial appeared to indicate more than the hiding of patents or broadening of claims, the fraud finding seems to be saying that they went back to modify their filings based on what was learnt from the meetings As for actual definition of terms in a patent : language in patents have to be very explicit. If someone defines an orange to be a yellow elongated fruit with a squishy peel, then that is what it is for the context of the document regardless what the grocery-industry accepted term is. Now with why the bus definition was narrowed, I can't say. Usually after a patent is filed, there is eventually an office action. Sometimes the office action involves prior art ... another invention predating the invention. One common response in the past to such an office action is for the terms to be narrowed. Without following the convoluted chain, it is hard to say this is what happened, but speaking as someone in the industry, there is a plethora of predated inventions from perhaps even textbooks, that will certainly become valid prior art if the definition of bus meant all bus and not just a multiplex bus.
