Rambus is "Hardly a Patent Troll"?

Oh puleeeasse.

What are you... a Rambus shareholder?

The Rambus memory might have been designed in around 1989/1990 (Rambus Inc was incorporated in 1990), the concept behind SDRAM was long before that.

Also, there were memos from Rambus in the mid 1990s that showed they were tailoring new patent applications to cover features of SDRAM being discussed, which were public knowledge (JEDEC meetings were not considered secret), which while not illegal, it's definitely evidence of bad faith on Rambus' part.

Also note that they didn't file any lawsuits for SDRAM until 2000... 7 YEARS AFTER SDRAM WAS IN PRODUCTION AND 5 YEARS AFTER RAMBUS LEFT JEDEC.

That sir is not too far removed from a Licencing Protection Racket similar to what Microsoft/SCO tried to pull with Linux.

Yes yes Rambus a good corporate citizen the world can be proud of, they must be right up there with Macrovision.
No product litigation freaks (IMHO)

Just becuase Rambus haven't manufactured anything doesn't make them a patent troll. Look at ARM.

That's not to say I think they are in the clear here.

Now Rambus has enough money to keep their workforce (lawyers) employed for a few more years. I'm all for protecting patents but this company make me sick.

JEDEC was a cesspool of an organization loosely run with no real disclosure rules and members breaking rules by patenting things being worked on in JEDEC. Fact is Rambus memory was invented back in late 1989 by a respectable engineer and a university professor. They shopped their invention around to memory makers to see if they were interested using/building it. SDRAM and DDR cherry picked the ideas used in Rambus in the mid 90s. Even after Rambus left JEDEC, DDR2 was created and it took even more ideas from Rambus's invention.

While Rambus isn't totally innocent. They should've left JEDEC way earlier. They did broaden their patent claims so that it covered SDRAM and DDR better(which isn't illegal from my understanding, you can expand your claim as long as it was in the initial patent). The "infamous shred day" or "document retention" hasn't helped them yet no one could ever find what in particular was missing or shredded(JEDEC: "Your Honor, we can't prove our case, the evidence must have been destroyed."). This has been the crux of all parties opposing Rambus, just in the notion that Rambus had acted improperly when it seems no one was following the rules anyways or they did something dirty by destroying evidence.

It's a sad day when a Patent Troll wins a court case.

FYI to the first poster... not only did Rambus fail to disclose patents it had to Jedec like it was supposed to, it contributed nothing to the development of new memory standards of the time that were SDRam and ddr-SDRam.

All they did was sit back, take ideas they heard at Jedec and quietly incorporated them as part of their own patents... and kept it quiet until WELL AFTER production had been ramped up.

RAMBUS is the very definition of a Patent Troll.

What did they ever make themselves?

Even the inferior Rambus memory wasn't even manufactured by Rambus.

And Intel was a big investor in Rambus... so this is also partly Intel's doing as well.

Things only fell apart between Intel and Rambus when Intel/Rambus couldn't make the 820 chipset work properly... with each company blaming the other for the problem.

"description of a Company when it needs to defend its IP in Court, and then wins?"

Ya, and doesn't disclose patents held when taking part in Jedec and has paper shredding days. Sounds like a fine example of a legit company.

"Patent prima donna"??
Is that what passes for the Inquirer's description of a Company when it needs to defend its IP in Court, and then wins?
Take your spot in the line of "news outlets" that still can't get it right.