Originally posted by: Ice9
Originally posted by: buleyb
Ice9, I stopped following the Micron/Inf lawsuits with Rambus a while back, what was the outcome to the discussion about Rambus attending the JEDEC meetings and not speaking up to its pending patents? It was shown that they had filed before JEDEC, and received patents after JEDEC decided on a standard.
just trying to get clarification
A lot has happened.
First off, Judge Payne found Rambus guilty of Fraud after infineon convinced Payne to disregard Rambus' markman ruling. Basically, Judge Payne took their 1990 patent out of their hands.
After they lost the case, the FTC immediately sued Rambus on antitrust grounds based on the fraud ruling.
Rambus immediately appealed Payne's ruling to the CAFC. After 8 months of consideration, the CAFC (Court of appeals, Federal circuit) completely overturned Judge Payne's verdict, claiming he erred in his claims construction. Since the FTC no longer had antitrust grounds, they changed their grounds for suit on "Document shredding" and moved towards a summary judgement (a ruling against them without a trial).
The case was recently heard by Judge Timony of the FTC. He immediately denied the summary judgement which grants Rambus the right to a trial, but said that the "burden of proof is to fall on Rambus" in the absence of these documents. Judge timony resigned into retirement shortly thereafter, and the case now has a new judge.
The FTC's case is going very poorly though. In fact, all the adverse presumptions that Judge Timony ordered in this case have been proven 100% wrong. You can view transcripts of the pre-trial motions
here.
Also, very recently Rambus also swayed Mitsubishi (known as MELCO in the court briefs) to turn over documentation clearly showing that JEDEC knew about Rambus' patents well before they ratified SDRAM and put it into full production. Judge Timony originally ruled that if JEDEC had known about Rambus' patents beforehand, that the FTC's case would be "immaterial".
Well, guess what. Rambus has filed a motion proving just that, and has filed for summary judgement.
The big problem is the FTC itself. They're not a "lawful" body. They're a budgeted section of the government that has to justify its existence. They could rule against Rambus despite all proof that they are right. However, once they appeal, this case goes right back to the CAFC... and they already ruled in Rambus' favor.
Ultimately, Rambus can't lose, because the facts are 100% in their favor. All that's happening now is stalling tactics so Micron doesn't have to pay royalties while they're already losing money hand over fist. Since Micron is the company with strong political ties, it's in their best interest to stall Rambus for as long as possible. But eventually, they will have to pay up.
