Originally posted by: Azurik
WSJ quoted me! Text below, a very good read on what is happening right now.
Wall Street Journal link
Rambus and the Case of the Missing News Release
By Don Clark
Rambus, a Silicon Valley company that has become a vortex for litigation, won a very favorable ruling from a federal judge Tuesday. Word of the verdict swirled quickly among Rambus shareholders, an extremely active community that buzzes in online forums over each twist and turn in the company?s complex legal battles. And Rambus shares, which often swing wildly in response to court developments, took a nice upward bounce Wednesday.
Yet the company, which actively publicizes its victories (and often its losses), issued no press release this time. A Rambus spokeswoman explained in an email note that the latest ruling by U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte essentially validated a prior jury verdict in favor of the company.
Well, yes, but Judge Whyte provided a particularly thorough analysis of a question that has dogged Rambus for years?did the company in the 1990s improperly mislead an industry standard committee called JEDEC?
Rambus, readers may recall, makes technology that boosts the performance of memory chips. It tried to get companies that manufacture such chips to license its technology; when that effort failed, it started filing patent suits against companies that used DRAM technologies that were endorsed by JEDEC. The memory-chip makers raised arguments that Rambus violated its obligations to inform the group about its plans to file patents on its technology?arguments that the Federal Trade Commission used against Rambus in an antitrust suit that was ultimately thrown out by an appeals court.
Judge Whyte, who presides in San Jose, Calif., has been considering whether the same allegations could serve as a defense for companies that Rambus has sued, including Hynix Semiconductor Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Nanya Technology Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. As a jury did in March 2008, he sided with Rambus, but cited a lot more reasons.
The judge concluded that JEDEC meeting minutes and other contemporaneous documents are more reliable than the memory of participants about the patent-disclosure duties of JEDEC members. He suggested that two witnesses had a bias against Rambus that undermined their credibility, citing conflicting documents and testimony of other JEDEC members. ?Consistent with the jury?s finding, the court agrees that Rambus made no misrepresentations and uttered no deceptive half-truths to JEDEC and its members,? Judge Whyte wrote in a 58-page ruling.
Might Rambus have other reasons for not trumpeting those conclusions? There is one geographical explanation: company lawyers are scheduled to be in South Korea for a mediated negotiating session with Hynix. The subject, according to a court filing, is how much in royalties on products must Hynix pay under prior rulings in Judge Whyte?s court.
But some Rambus shareholders think negotiations may go into the larger issue of how much Hynix should pay in total damages; the court has already ordered the Korean company to pay $133 million, but how much it would take to end this particular front in the legal wars of Rambus is anybody?s guess.
?They could have settled the royalty issue over the telephone,? one shareholder says.
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