Woah! Rambus considering going after NVidia?!

[Remnant2]

Check this out.. found it at JC's. Rambus has asked Nvidia to pay royalties to them, for their use of SDRAM and DDR SDRAM on their vid cards/chipsets.



<< For example, we have been advised by Rambus Inc. that it believes our products infringe certain patents owned by Rambus and requesting that we agree to certain licensing terms, including royalty payments. We believe the Rambus patents are invalid, not infringed and unenforceable. Although we currently are having discussions with Rambus regarding potential business alternatives to Rambus' proposed licensing terms, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to reach a satisfactory agreement with Rambus. If we are unable to do so, Rambus may sue us for patent infringement at any time. >>

 

[lsd]

WTH??
So that means matrox and Ati will be asked too?
WTF is wrong with them??

 

[compuwiz1]

What a crock of crap. Does Rambus think they own the world? :|

 

[AndyHui]

Rambus should be called Rambus, Rambus and Rambus, lawyers.

Put resources into making some good technology instead of putting into lawyers.

 

[Vrangel]

They wont quit unless tort reform is passed.
Which actually might happen with G.W.Bush in the White House.


EDIT: I mean loser in a civil lawsuit will have to pay winner's expenses.

 

[Hanpan]

Rambus is retarded. They have shredded every bit of fathomal interity. KInda sad when company's go from an intellectual property to a suing company.

Rambus Company profile:

Objectives and business plan: SUE EVERYONE!!!!

 

[chiwawa626]

Rambus if ur listening, Eat a Dick!

 

[lsd]

I'm guessing the x-box will use ddr memory, so a showdown of M$ vs. rambust maybe in order?

 

[Gatsby]

Rambus is like the Al gore Campaign.. Lawsuits Law Suits Lawsuits..

Ahhh its getting to me..

Kill RAMBUS..


Gatsby - 16

 

[borealiss]

pathetic.

 

[Auric]

Hey, if y'all spent mucho dineros developing valuable IP and secured patents y'all would be doing the same thang. Welcome to Bidness 101. Besides, it only matters to most of us if it is going to make our next PC component cost a dollar or two more. Stop whining about it.

 

[axelfox]

What are you, from the south!??!! JK

 

[Techno]

This may be a stupid question, Why don't companys like Micron, NEC, Samsung, or someone, come out with a brand new type of RAM? I know it takes a long time (and money) to develop new stuff, but wouldn't it be a good benifit in the long run for ram companys and to kill off Rambus for good?

 

[AdamK47]

Anyone care to go on a demolition mission to Rambus HQ? Oooops, I shouldn't say that. Rambus might sue me.

 

[AdamK47]

Who actually types out &quot;y'all&quot;? It sounds kinda hickish. hehe

 

[goofy2000]

I didn't know Rambus developed DDR technology.. If that's true, why didn't they use it in the first place?

(sorry, dunno much bout anything)

 

[Oberon]

Techno: IBM are developing a new RAM called MRAM that promises to be very impressive. It uses magnetism to store the data.

MRAM couldn't possibly be claimed by Rambus either since IBM first thought it up way back in 1974 or something. There have been some webnews posts about it recently on some sites (can't remember which ones, but probably TomsHardware).

 

[Oberon]

goofy2000: Don't get me started!
Rambus didn't develop DDR! They were a member of JEDEC, a group of memory manufacturers, who developed SDRAM and DDR. Rambus is claiming they own patents pertaining to SDRAM - and since 'DDR' refers to DDR SDRAM their claim to SDRAM patents affect DDR SDRAM too.

However Rambus violated their agreement with JEDEC (that any JEDEC member agrees to when joining) by filing patents on stuff discussed/developed in JEDEC without telling JEDEC (i.e. the SDRAM ones they claim they own). They also didn't disclose all pending patent filings that they had at the time they joined JEDEC (another agreement breach). So what this means is that the patents they claim they own that deal with SDRAM shouldn't be valid because if anybody should own them, it should be JEDEC, or some member of JEDEC.

They really showed their guilt in this matter by leaving JEDEC shortly after Dell (I think) had been sued (and they lost) because they had done a similiar thing (I forget the details).
<I hope I got all that correct>

Rambus REALLY sucks! :disgust:

 

[Czar]

So why in the world doesnt JEDEC sue the life out of Rambus??


What they are doing now is because they broke the agreement with JEDEC so therefore JEDEC could sue Rambus and get everything Rambus is getting out of these contracts and alot more, making Rambus go bankrupt.

 

[Oberon]

Czar: I don't pretend to be a legal expert, and I don't know anything more about JEDEC agreements than what I've read online so I don't know what options are open to JEDEC or it's members.

All I can say is that I'm rooting for anybody that goes after Rambus! They should go down in flames :|

But the realist in me reminds me that they're going to be around for a while... Pentium 4 has for the first time shown some use for RDRAM.

 

[Sunny129]

and who really cares if Rambus developed DDR technology? can they really sue anyone for patent infringement? correct me if i'm wrong, but AMD can't sue Intel for Intel's use of copper interconnects in their processors just b/c AMD came up with the idea of copper interconnects. and HedgeHog cant sue every other heatsink maker for incorporating an all-copper heatsink into their product line just b/c HedgeHog came up with the idea first, even though they claim they can. yes, one can sue for the infringement of a patented design, but how do they expect to get money from nVidia? nVidia invests their time and money into graphics developement, not RAM developement. in other words, they dont make their own RAM. in fact they dont really make their own cards. they just sell their GPU to card makers such as ASUS, Hercules (i.e. Guillemot), and so forth. it is the card maker, not the chip maker who deals with what RAM goes on what card. and even most card makers dont make their own RAM. they purchase from companies who specify in making RAM. it is those companies that are &quot;supposedly&quot; infringing on the patent rights of Rambus. Rambus is just showing the rest of the computer industry what sore losers they are by not making a move with the technology they had and now filing suit against those who are now taking advantage of DDR.

and since we know that Rambus reallyy didnt develop DDR, and they are just claiming rights to SDRAM, they couldnt possibly get anything out of the suit, since everything these days is SDRAM, and Rambus is all by its self in RDRAM land...

 

[BaTTo]

I'll let my signature do the talking.

 

[Oberon]

Sorry for this aside: Sunny129 - is the reason you have a confused face next to

<< Pentium II 350 @ 350 mHz >>

in your sig because your 350 MegaHz P2 is running at 350 milliHz?

hehe, sorry - couldn't resist

 

[Czar]

Actually it was IBM who made copper Interconnectors first.


But its more like AMD would sue Intel because AMD was first with SIMD instructions.

 

[Oberon]

I doubt AMD came up with SIMD. I'm sure someone like DEC or IBM could have done that, or even a DSP designer like TI or something.

The idea that the first person to use something has the right to sue someone else who uses it later is silly. In order to have a legal claim over a technology you must own a patent. That's what this whole thing is about. Not being legally inclined, I don't know exactly what conditions one has to meet to get a patent awarded when you're not the first to use the subject of the patent. But unless it can be shown that someone else invented the technology you're going to get the patent. This doesn't preclude the possibility to overturn the patent at a later stage though. But you can imaging that it's much more difficult to overturn a patent than to get one awarded to you.

Back to SIMD: it isn't even patentable anyway since it's an idea. One can patent the implementation of the idea, not the idea (as I understand it).