Doctrine of "unclean hands" affects Rambus-FTC case

The FTC, on January 6th, filed a declaration saying that Rambus' previous accusations of collusion - which we covered earlier - couldn't be taken seriously.

The story so far... Rambus wants to see lots of documents that the DOJ, the FTC and a number of its erstwhile customers -- and even Intel, its former great friend -- don't want it to see.

We really want to see them, so find ourselves in the unlikely position of being on the Rambusters' side.... There's nothing like disclosure.

The DOJ is investigating alleged price hiking by a gang of people who make DRAMs.

That led the FTC to hit out against Rambus' earlier accusations of memory firm collusion in a lengthy filing which includes earlier case law which suggests that "unclean hands is not a defense to an antitrust action".

Alleged Downstream Conspiracies [ADCs? Ed.] ignore decades of precedents and are irrelevant in antitrust cases, the FTC claimed in that motion to the now long suffering judge.

What's next? Ah, Rambus gives the judge more stuff to pore over and starts getting sarcastic, saying "Complaint counsel evidently want very badly to limit discovery by respondent Rambus into possible collusion by DRAM manufacturers" - so much so that the FTC has filed an "unauthorized response to Rambus' memorandum".

Rambus claims in its response to a response to another response that if the evidence shows DRAM manufacturers have conspired and violated antitrust laws that are the subject of the FTC complaint, it would cast more doubt on the credibility of those firms and their representatives.

Then we've got a great big long list of "redacted" - that is to say hidden documents which you, John and Jane Doe, are not allowed to see, but which must be really juicy indeed if everyone agrees they should be suppressed. We really want to see the ones about Bert McComas that are "redacted"... We really do...

Friends who know McComas say that his name is not on the witness lists of either side, meaning his comments were drawn from public documents or from private correspondence between him and his clients. The same friends said that neither of these sources could constitute price fixing. Two or more manufacturers must collude directly for price fixing to occur.

"Else," the same friends said, "analytical comments made by Mike Magee at The Register or The Inquirer could be construed as price fixing".

Even if Rambus gets the FTC case kicked out of court, can there be any possibility after this that it can license its RDRAM technology to Dramurai other than Samsung or Elpida, which are happily churning out RIMMs? But as it collects $100 million a year in royalties from Dramurai who did license DDR and SDRAM technology from Rambus, does that matter too much anyway?

You couldn't make any of this up. And we haven't.

The soap opera case continues... µ

See Also
Rambus alleges DRAM conspirators forced Intel to choose DDR Earlier links inside