The marathon Rambus legal saga is throwing up curious results. A
That decision ensured that the case brought against Rambus by the FTC had to be abandoned.
The FTC had alleged that, by concealing its patent position, Rambus was trying to establish an illegal monopoly which is contrary to anti-trust law.
However, with the decision that you don't have to reveal your patent position if you sit on a standards-setting body, then clearly the FTC's anti-trust allegation falls apart.
But the decision has another effect: it makes a total nonsense of standards-setting. How can anyone ever again trust anyone else on a standards-setting committee?
How can anyone be sure that their fellow committee-members are not trying to get standards established which suit their own companies' IP portfolios?
JEDEC's lawyer, Dan Prywes, says that JEDEC is still insisting that members disclose their patent positions while on standards-setting committees.
It's the american technological equivalent of Roe v. Wade. I hope it gets thrown out though.
On the surface one might think that Rambus was the bad guy. But if you dig deeper you realize that the story is much more complicated than that.
Prior to joining the standards committee, Rambus was developing it's IP and provided their designs under non-disclosure to several other RAM manufacturers. These latter guys then INVITED Rambus to join the standards committee clearly with an objective to get Rambus'IP free. Rambus was foolish enough to join, undoubtedly thinking that they could then lock in the rest of the industry to their IP.
So people then say that the standards committee did not know of Rambus patent applications, but in fact, since several of the members, were under non-disclosure with Rambus, this puts a lie to that claim.
Further, legal proceedings have shown that Rambus remained silent at the meetings as to whether they did or did not have patents related to the IP being discussed; they said they would not comment on it. Yet the committee went ahead anyways and selected the IP in question for the standard. The trials have further shown that there were no hard rules regarding the disclosure of patents at these meetings. Rambus in fact was not the only member who refused to comment on patents. (I believe IBM among others did the same.)
So the reality IMO is that the RAM manufactures knowingly attempted to get Rambus' IP for free via the standard's committee, and Rambus probably thought that they could outsmart them at their game, but did nothing illegal, nor immoral, since they developed the IP in the first place, and these standards committees at the time did not have their act in place to operate properly.
Thanks Governor, that really does put a different complexion on things. I've never heard Rambus make those points. If I had heard them before, you're right, I would have felt more supportive towards the Rambus position.
David,
The Governor's play by play is delightfully clear and simple. I've been following this saga for several years and I've read the judicial findings, testimonies, and judgments that absolutely align with the story as told by Governor.
Rambus is guilty of not getting its story out except in a courtroom. Can't figure their motive for that, but so be it.
I own Rambus. For further good info check rambus.org and investorvillage.com (RMBS forum).
Thanks pk, the Rambus story seems to be a salutary tale - don't trust anyone, don't expect the world to respect your IP and keep away from the law. Maybe Rambus should have been a product company and just made faster DRAMs than anyone else. The FTC would have protected them from rip-off imports..
Hmm, well Goversnor's story is one side of the picture and his "clearly with an objective to get Rambus'IP free" sums up his view up perfectly. There were, however several "technologies" on the table at JEDEC at the time, including SLDRAM which had been shown to actually work... as opposed to Rambus' invention which had not even been born in its DRDRAM form. The reason Intel worked to come up with and chose the DRDRAM "standard" was because they wanted to proprietarize the PC architecture... and they had come to an arrangement which involved warrants for Rambus' stock, such that Intel would have pretty much owned Rambus when the fait was err, accompli.
Oh and the reason that Rambus was not a "product company" was that they knew very little about DRAM technology. In fact Rambus' RDRAM is not a memory technology at all: it is a serial communication channel with, of course, some add-on bits to interface to the existing internal circuitry to DRAM cell banks.
The whole "dog's breakfast" was a complicated story which I don't think anyone can summarize in a few paragraphs but I have to ask myself why nobody made an attempt to buy out Rambus when their stock was at $4-5.
Scunnerous, that's a very telling point about the absence of buyers for Rambus at $4. Thanks