En Banc Rehearing in Infineon case DENIED
Looks like Infineon will be settling for that $800M in back royalities any day now
Looks like Infineon will be settling for that $800M in back royalities any day now
Another win for Rambus
- Thread starter Ice9
- Start date
dullard
Elite Member
- May 21, 2001
- 26,200
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Its good to hear that the courts are finally obeying the laws. So many people here were misinformed about Rambus and call it evil when in fact it was just the opposite (companies suing Rambus over patents that Rambus clearly and legally had held or were pending).
Agreed. Ice has done a pretty impressive job of informing the masses of the realities surrounding Rambus.
Well, then... I honestly think Rambus is gonna get a royal screwing by the FTC initially. This will mean a nice fat $4 share price until they win on appeal.
Rambus is definitely not out of the woods. The current problem with the FTC is that they've ignored every legal precedent to date regarding their antitrust case against them.
In fact, they've ignored the CAFC verdict entirely thus far.
The thing is though, the FEDERAL circuit (a higher court than the FTC) already knows this, and will easily overturn the FTC verdict. But this could take some time (a year or more).
However, if Infineon shouts "uncle" and settles, Rambus could make them a sweetheart of a deal.
It's been asserted by Rambus that there's collusion in the dram industry, and recently there's been proof about it in the form of documents from Mitsubishi (their semi biz formerly called 'Melco'). The FTC fought hard to get these branded as inadmissible, but the law is on Rambus' side, and the FTC has to do their best to not make this trial look like a COMPLETE sham
If Rambus and Infineon start talking, Rambus *MIGHT* strike a deal with Infineon stating "you give me your docs on Micron and Hynix fixing RDRAM prices, and I'll cut your royalty backpayment in half".
Things will get really interesting with this case from here on out, but I honestly feel that the FTC is gonna screw rambus, simply because they can. But Rambus is still profitable and has the money to see this through where the other dram manufacturers don't.
I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to update everyone on what's going on at the FTC trial based on my interpretations from fredhager.com and the FTC Docs. Before that though, a shareholder suit levied against Rambus after the Virigina "fraud verdict" trial was thrown out by a federal judge. This drove their stock price up a bit, but in all honesty it was 100% expected after the overturning at the federal circuit level.
At the FTC, Complaint counsel is nearly through, and I think i'm going to change my prediction on the outcome of this case. At first in this thread I felt that the "fix was in" and the FTC was going to win their Kangaroo Court round hook, line and sinker. Interestingly enough, Sean Royall (the complainant counsel for the FTC) is making that very difficult since he keeps producing witnesses that appear to benefit Rambus' case rather than the FTC's. The FTC's case relies heavily on the fact that "JEDEC didn't know about Rambus' patents" during their membership in JEDEC.
There's a few SERIOUS holes in the FTC's case though. For one, at the time when Rambus was in JEDEC (1993-96), it was *against the law* to divulge patent applications BEFORE THEY WERE APPROVED. Whoopsie! Since it takes YEARS for a patent application to be granted, Rambus legally couldn't have done any more than they did.
The biggest hole is the fact that nearly ALL the memory manufacturers attending JEDEC had outstanding NDA's with Rambus on their technology. Also, all of the memory manufacturers who claimed to have formulated the SDRAM standard were allowed to present at JEDEC conferences... err, well, ALMOST all. One was barred from presenting: Rambus. Why? Because they would have pitched RDRAM - so they were squelched from doing so.
One of the people on the stand was Steve Appleton, CEO of Micron. When he was asked several questions about whether he knew anything about Rambus' technology, all of his answers were pretty much "I don't remember". If you ever watched even the lamest watered down small-claims People's Court junk on TV, you pretty much know that you can only hear it so many times before no one believes it.
During the mid-may portion of this antitrust hearing, Sean Royall won a bid from the ALJ (administrative law judge) to pierce attorney/client privilege in this case on the grounds that "the legal team was used in influencing Rambus' business decisions". However, he recently <i>reversed his own decision</i> after saying that he sees Rambus' side of this. You don't see that very often.
At any rate, I really think it will only take some "slightly flawed" logic for the FTC to "prove" that Rambus was in the wrong about SDRAM (though it will be overturned on appeal once this reaches a REAL court). However, it appears that DDR is 100% safely Rambus' invention and the FTC will grant that portion to Rambus. They really have no choice since Rambus has had the proven-in-court patents since 1990 and was not in JEDEC at the time it was being developed or ratified.
Since SDRAM is really only a small percentage of royalties in comparison to DDR, it appears that both parties will win. Rambus will be able to collect their 3.5% royalty on all DDR (and DDR2) units sold, and the FTC will save face by saying they "protected the consumer" in the case of SDRAM. The only reason I say this is because they can't grant a complete win to themselves without irreparibly harming open standard setting committees. If the FTC finds Rambus guilty, then there will be NO major innovators attending open standards setting boards because finding them guilty will immediately mean all your patents covering an "open" standard will be unenforceable. No company will be willing to give up the only thing they have to make a buck in the name of "free beer".
At the FTC, Complaint counsel is nearly through, and I think i'm going to change my prediction on the outcome of this case. At first in this thread I felt that the "fix was in" and the FTC was going to win their Kangaroo Court round hook, line and sinker. Interestingly enough, Sean Royall (the complainant counsel for the FTC) is making that very difficult since he keeps producing witnesses that appear to benefit Rambus' case rather than the FTC's. The FTC's case relies heavily on the fact that "JEDEC didn't know about Rambus' patents" during their membership in JEDEC.
There's a few SERIOUS holes in the FTC's case though. For one, at the time when Rambus was in JEDEC (1993-96), it was *against the law* to divulge patent applications BEFORE THEY WERE APPROVED. Whoopsie! Since it takes YEARS for a patent application to be granted, Rambus legally couldn't have done any more than they did.
The biggest hole is the fact that nearly ALL the memory manufacturers attending JEDEC had outstanding NDA's with Rambus on their technology. Also, all of the memory manufacturers who claimed to have formulated the SDRAM standard were allowed to present at JEDEC conferences... err, well, ALMOST all. One was barred from presenting: Rambus. Why? Because they would have pitched RDRAM - so they were squelched from doing so.
One of the people on the stand was Steve Appleton, CEO of Micron. When he was asked several questions about whether he knew anything about Rambus' technology, all of his answers were pretty much "I don't remember". If you ever watched even the lamest watered down small-claims People's Court junk on TV, you pretty much know that you can only hear it so many times before no one believes it.
During the mid-may portion of this antitrust hearing, Sean Royall won a bid from the ALJ (administrative law judge) to pierce attorney/client privilege in this case on the grounds that "the legal team was used in influencing Rambus' business decisions". However, he recently <i>reversed his own decision</i> after saying that he sees Rambus' side of this. You don't see that very often.
At any rate, I really think it will only take some "slightly flawed" logic for the FTC to "prove" that Rambus was in the wrong about SDRAM (though it will be overturned on appeal once this reaches a REAL court). However, it appears that DDR is 100% safely Rambus' invention and the FTC will grant that portion to Rambus. They really have no choice since Rambus has had the proven-in-court patents since 1990 and was not in JEDEC at the time it was being developed or ratified.
Since SDRAM is really only a small percentage of royalties in comparison to DDR, it appears that both parties will win. Rambus will be able to collect their 3.5% royalty on all DDR (and DDR2) units sold, and the FTC will save face by saying they "protected the consumer" in the case of SDRAM. The only reason I say this is because they can't grant a complete win to themselves without irreparibly harming open standard setting committees. If the FTC finds Rambus guilty, then there will be NO major innovators attending open standards setting boards because finding them guilty will immediately mean all your patents covering an "open" standard will be unenforceable. No company will be willing to give up the only thing they have to make a buck in the name of "free beer".
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