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Rambus slaps one on Nvidia

What’s a lawsuit between friends?
Sun Jul 13 2008, 22:39

SERIAL LITIGATION COMPANY Rambus Inc. is once again suing a company for patent infringement. Unsurprisingly enough the target today is the Green Goblin itself, Nvidia. The suit centres on 17 patent infringements related to none other than... memory controller interfaces (bet you weren’t expecting that). Every bit of tech from SDR up to GDDR3 will have some way infringed on Rambus IP.

In a public statement Rambus says that for the last 6 years Nvidia has infringed their patents, and it’s fed up trying to get them to comply. It has now decided to pursue the matter legally all the while being chummy enough to leave the door open for a (fast cash) settlement.

“Graphics and multimedia products require leading-edge memory performance, and as NVIDIA advances its product portfolio, it infringes more and more of our patents. We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions. Nevertheless, we hope to continue discussions with NVIDIA to reach a negotiated settlement." said Tom Lavelle senior veep and General Counsel at Rambus.

Apart from the damages, it is also asking the US District Court for a permanent injunction against Nvidia.

Hynix, Samsung, Nanya, Inotera, Micron are all names that have been screwed, sorry, sued by Rambus in recent years. This string of victories tends to aggravate the situation, as they strengthen the base for the following case. We’d honestly like to see how much money Rambus Inc. has made to date in court. The Rambus site even has a trophy room dubbed “Litigation Update” just for these things, you know?

Kicking Nvidia while it’s down (considering it’s just bitten that $150/$200 million bullet) will probably generate some sort of blowback, but Rambus seems increasingly confident that this “we’re suing but willing to settle” attitude will sort things out toot-de-sweet.

We wonder what the lawyer-to-engineer ratio is at Rambus, these days. µ

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Update

Doesn't look like things are going well for the FTC. No en blanc rehearing:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/5109531/Rambus-v-FTC

posted by : Treowth, 27 August 2008 Complain about this comment
not-Rambus

There appear to be a lot of Rambus trolls commenting---Rambus deservedly has a bad reputation for the way they got their patent claims which they now use to collect. Rambus had spies on JEDEC (with wonderful code names like Deep Throat and Secret Squirrel) well after they exited the standards organization. This allowed them to adjust claims in their patents during prosecution to read on the standards being developed by JEDEC for SDRAM, DDRx etc. I recommend reading the FTC investigation report describing their conduct.

posted by : jayne, 31 July 2008 Complain about this comment
Screwing Rambus

Yes, it is quite a list of companies that have been stealing IP from Rambus.

Do you mind if I steal your trademark and use it at my site to sell a few clicks or would you increase the lawyer to hack ratio and sue me?

Just wondering . . .

posted by : Treowth, 14 July 2008 Complain about this comment
Awesome.

Hopefully if Rambus keeps this crap up they'll either A) Get investigated for Anti-Trust/Monopoly or B) someone will just go Office Space on them and burn them down. Thats cool with me. 

Technology needs to move forward, not always be taking a step back because of stupid lawsuits over patents on things which probably shouldn't be allowed to be patented. Public domain type classification or something!

posted by : batch, 14 July 2008 Complain about this comment
MULTIBALL

But seriously wtf is up with the inq recently. Ive seen like 4 repeated storys in the last 30 days.

Surely your actually paying someone to sit at a desk and approve these things. Perhaps youd better check your not paying one of those drinking birds favoured by Lazy fat men working from home.

At least you dont have to vent gas from afar.

posted by : ijakings, 14 July 2008 Complain about this comment
Rambus

The fact is, that Rambus, which was originally a small team of university professors, invented RAM as we know it. The mere fact that their innovations were successful is not justification for removing their rights. The whole point of awarding patents is to enable the intellectual creators to benefit.

posted by : James, 14 July 2008 Complain about this comment
...old news?

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/11/rambus-sues-nvidia

I'm not sure, but this article bring me out in deja vu rash.

posted by : IconYu, 14 July 2008 Complain about this comment
aboutus
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