The miserable saga of Rambus drags on as the company makes an enemy of a
It's reminiscent of Qualcomm who had several of its lawyers reported to the California Bar Association for failing to disclose relevant evidence.
If you're a company which is trying to use the law to underpin your business model, it is crass to upset the judges.
Rambus was the company which had it all: the best solution to the micro-to-memory interface bottleneck which was taken up by Intel. How could it fail?
One problem was Rambus' customer base - DRAM manufacturers which make wafer thin or zero margins. Last year they lost a collective $8 billion.
How do you get such people to accept a royalty charge for IP? By being very tactful and not charging too much.
Rambus charged higher than normal royalties and was quick to sue when they didn't pay.
Another big problem for Rambus is its investors. Fired up by expectations that when Rambus wins its court cases the company will collect $10 billion+ in back royalties and the shares will be worth $100 apiece, hyper-pro-active Rambus investors threaten the Rambus management with legal action if they don't aggressively go after the DRAM customer base.
So the management is stuck between the rock of an impecunious customer base and the hard place of its over-engaged investors.
It's tough but it's no excuse for upsetting the judiciary. Those guys have the whip-hand.
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a) The Delaware Judge took 14 months!!! to rule and levied her ruling just days before a CA trial was set to begin.
b) The Delaware Judge in her ruling did not consider (as in, totally ignored) two previous and diametrically opposite rulings by the chief FTC ALJ & Judge Whyte in San Jose federal court, two rulings that totally exonerated Rambus from the charge of spoliation.
c) The Delaware Judge levied the most harsh remedy possible, effectively striping Rambus from their IP with out any supporting evidence to justify this remedy. you can be sure that the CAFC headed by Judge Rader will totally dismiss The Delaware Judge's inferior ruling.
d) It is NOT reminiscent of Broadcom v. Qualcomm as among other issues Rambus didn't have patents or patent applications relevant to the discussed standard at the time of the aleged spoliation. (read the rulings for god sake)
e) Rambus is a victim of a wide ranging conspiracy that set a goal more then a decade ago to destroy Rambus and the Rambus business model. this conspiracy will be exposed in the Rambus v. the DRAM manufacturers (a.k.a the "DRAM cartel") anti trust trial which is set to begin in March-April 2009, in San Fransisco.
f) The Royalty that Rambus asked (0.7% for SDRAM and 3.5% for DDR) was well with in the norm and notably lower then several other royalty demands from companies like Texas Instruments and IBM that were asking and reciving 5%, Qualcomm had asked even more.
g) Blaming the Rambus investors for pressuring management is preposterous as the investors fully support the management pursuit of Justice (to the fullest extent possible)
With the fantastic legal representation from Gregory Stone (MTO) and others, Rambus investors (54% of which are institutions) patiently await for truth to emerge and the long due Justice, served.
Thanks Regata. It just seems beyond common sense to pursue litigation at a cost of $300 million since 2000 to have the issue still unresolved.
Surely there's a better way to get Rambus' technology into the market than this.
As to the investors, my point is that they push the Rambus management to pursue this litigious approach in the hope of getting a big pay day later.
Somehow it seems it would be better to work with the memory manufacturers rather than against them.
Fter all, the memory manufactuers are, or should be, their customers.