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

To: Don Green who wrote (85825)	3/13/2003 10:26:17 AM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Infineon-Rambus suit could disrupt standards process By Semiconductor Business News March 13, 2003 (10:23 a.m. EST) URL: semibiznews.com BOSTON, Mass. -- There's a new wrinkle in the legal battle between Infineon Technologies AG and Rambus Inc. The Boston-based law firm of Lucash, Gesmer & Updegrove LLP late today (March 12, 2003) announced it has filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of six major standard setting organizations (SDOs), in an effort “to influence the outcome” of the bitter legal battle involving Infineon and Rambus. The "friend of the court" brief attempts “to prevent potentially disabling disruption of the technology standard-setting process,” according to the firm. The firm is representing six SDOs with 850 members, including IMS Global Learning Consortium Inc., OpenGIS Consortium, PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, and The Open Group. The Rambus verses Infineon legal saga has been followed by thousands of companies that participate in the standards setting process for good reason. Last year, a court ruled that Rambus, a member of the Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC), had committed fraud by failing to disclose patent rights, which it later asserted against adopters of a JEDEC memory standard. Infineon was one such adopter, and when it refused to pay royalties, Rambus sued. Infineon brought counterclaims, including one that alleged that Rambus had not only deliberately failed to disclose its patents, but that it had amended those patents to track the JEDEC standard as it developed. The trial court believed Infineon, and awarded it more than $7 million in costs and damages, based on the behavior of Rambus before and during the course of the litigation. However, on appeal, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit -- which has jurisdiction over all appeals from U.S. patent cases -- held in a non-unanimous opinion on January 29, 2003, that Rambus had not committed fraud. On February 26, Infineon filed a motion petitioning the entire court to rehear the appeal. "When the Appeals Court's decision was announced, many were shocked, since the trial record seemed to indicate that even Rambus had believed that it had 'gamed' the system," said Andrew Updegrove, a partner with Lucash, Gesmer & Updegrove, in a statement. "Moreover, the narrow analysis that the court applied in reviewing the infringement claims leads some to fear that participating in standard setting will now be more uncertain and difficult,” he said. “Due to the many standard setting clients which we represent, we thought that it was important for the court to better understand the consequences of its decision." The brief filed by Updegrove's law firm seeks to educate the court on the impact that the existing decision could have on the entire standard setting process. In a statement, David Schell, the president of Open GIS Consortium, said: "What is so destructive about the decision to overturn Rambus is that the voluntary standards process has become the de facto norm for creation of orderly technology markets. "Challenging the basic premises of trust and fair play goes far beyond the righting of a dispute between two companies -- it subverts the practical market assumptions that enable the IT industry to continue to function authentically," he said.