Mannerisms

Rambus has been pursuing patent infringement actions against the DRAM manufacturers for over a decade without any final result, and Qualcomm lost case after case before settling earlier this year with its doughtiest opponent Nokia.

So why does Bertrand Cambou, CEO of Spansion, think he will have any more success than Rambus in extracting royalties from memory companies.

 "I think the issue is that Spansion is a memory company, it's not just writing IPs in the corner like Rambus", Cambou told me earlier this week.

Isn't it going to be difficult trying to get royalties from such an unprofitable sector as flash memory? "Samsung say their NAND business is very profitable," replied Cambou.

Why sue? "Twelve months ago we were talking to them about charge-trapping technology because floating point is not lasting forever. We said: 'We can help you go to charge trapping'. Samsung said they didn't want to talk about licensing," said Cambou.

Won't the US legal system tie the case up for years? "The ITC can make a decision in nine months", said Cambou, "we estimate the worst case will be 16 months. The quality and strength of our patents should make it much faster."

Of course the money from IP licensing is good - if you can get it. The AMD patents 'on average' expire in 2020. "We're asking for six years compensation for the last six years", said Cambou, "take your number - $200 million a year, $300 million a year, it comes to a big sum."

Yes, 26 years at $200 million a year is something stonkingly huge. Getting your money like that is much nicer than running fabs and motivating designers, managers and salesforces.

"We want to establish a licensing business", replied Cambou, "we want to be a major licensing house."

Yes. And so did Rambus. And so did Qualcomm.