Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Please try not to bash VirtualLarry. His opinions are his own, and, for various reasons, I agree with some of his points.
As for the settlement, it signifies nothing. Infineon had the upper hand after RAMBUS got slapped hard by Judge Payne as indicated here:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/01/HNrambusdismiss_1.html
Every one of Judge Payne's rulings were found to be grossly erroneous by the federal circuit. In fact, Judge Rader of the federal circuit (and the #1 patent authority in the nation) said "No reasonable jury could have found Rambus guilty". None of his rulings have EVER stood. Judge Payne said himself he is not well-versed in patent law.
Now let me get this straight. Infineon is a huge subsidiary of Siemens. They have the power to leverage as much money as they need. Hell, they retained Kenneth Starr, the same guy involved in the whole Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton fiasco. Rambus is a tiny 200 person company who makes piddly money comapred to Infineon. They don't have 100 million to spend on legal expenses.
Now you want me to believe that Infineon decided to settle because it was financially worthwhile for them - and give up tens of millions of dollars a year in royalties effectively DOUBLING Rambus' bottom line - even though their own financial statements show that it only cost them single-digit millions a year to fight them in court? Explain this logic.
Potential PR problems, sure i'll buy that. Infineon admitted they were guilty of infringement. They stated that Rambus' patents were valid and were simply hinging on the JEDEC argument.
As for why Rambus Inc delayed defending their own patents, this has been discussed ad nauseum.
Read this, and please try to understand it as it outlines the very crux of this case. At the time Rambus attended JEDEC, they only had patent applications. The patents were not granted at the time.
ALL those companies were under NDA from Rambus. This is all in the DOJ dockets. If you read them, you'll see that all these companies knew about Rambus technology long before SDRAM was an itch in JEDEC's pants. JEDEC only wanted to know about Patents, not patent applications. In fact, at the time it was illegal to state that you had patent applications. You could present your technology all you wanted, just don't say "we have patent applications on this." That's the law.
Rambus, once again, is not a memory manufacturer. They are a technology company that simply wants to be the brains behind an innovation, and leave the manufacturing to someone else. They don't have the money or resources. Therefore, they wanted to work with all of these companies. Their desire to want to work with these companies is what made them accept the invitation to JEDEC. Since JEDEC is NOT opposed to licensing proprietary technology (provided they are offered RAND rates, which Rambus would have agreed to), this gave them the opportunity to have RDRAM become the new JEDEC standard.
So, if all these companies knew about Rambus technology under NDA, how exactly did Rambus "trick" JEDEC into adopting their technology? (hint: this defense fell flat on its face in the ftc trial.)
How exactly can JEDEC claim Rambus did something wrong when it was JEDEC themselves who barred Rambus from presenting their technology on all 3 occasions offered during the SDRAM standardization process? (hint: in the entire history of JEDEC, only ONE company was ever barred from presenting their technology for consideration. That company? RAMBUS. Read the FTC docket for more information.)
Your post is the same weak argument that simply hasn't held up in court. In fact, it simply goes to show just how far these memory manufacturers are willing to go to squeeze a small player out of the market.