- Monday, 16 November 2009
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The Israeli Palestine dispute is a short term problem - Dr Craig Barrett, Intel
Rambus ruling encroaches
A US COURT has ruled in favour of Rambus in a pretrial session of its patent infringement case against four of the DRAMurai. The court presided by Judge Ronald Whyte found grounds for the one of Rambus’ 11 claims against some of the biggest DRAM makers.
Once again, patent infringement rears its ugly head. Rambus alleges that Samsung, Hynix, Micron and Nanya infringed on patents that cover DDR, DDR2, DDR3 and most types of GDDR.
The trial itself will take place in January 2009, but the current ruling will mean that at least one claim doesn’t get thrown out of court on lack of merit. The DRAMurai, if convicted, stand to pay a sizable (hundreds of million) dollar amount to Rambus and may even be forced by the judge to submit to further compensatory measures.
The timing couldn’t be worse as things aren’t looking good for the DRAMurai right now: low prices, lower demand and Rambus rolling up wads of legal papers and whacking them on the head.
The analyst crowd is staking that Rambus will get things sorted their way and the ailing companies will see a very nasty beginning to 2009. This could result in something far more interesting (and potentially lucrative) for investors: As things stand, these memory makers are struggling in the market (as are all). A favourable sentence for Rambus could result in some reshuffling of the DRAM deck and a new deal all-round. Mergers, bankruptcies, restructuring... you name it. Naturally, Rambus wouldn’t like it if the companies folded, they’d rather have them buying serial licenses... all of them.
But life isn’t easy for Rambus either. It hasn’t had a healthy lawsuit this year and investors have been wary of touching it. Until now, that is. Anticipating a favourable ruling these chaps have rushed to the market in droves and bought up RMBS stock , making it jump 78.6 per cent in after-hours trading (November 26th), from its lowest price in five years ($5.20).
That's confidence for ya. µ
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Rambus should lose and bitterly. It has always patented ALSO existing technologies. The punishment should be 100 trillion USD and if there is not enough money then the shareholders property should be confiscated. That should teach them to not be creedy!
Those bas****s are ruining the business and harrashing the very reason we have REAL patents.
This court idiocy is possible only in USA
The US patent system is badly broken with anyone being able to patent anything. It also expects that its patents be automatically recognized everywhere. The solution to this problem is to isolate the US -- its a big market, certainly, but the short term loss of business is nothing compared to the long term consequences of letting trolls win. If we run out of DRAM or can only get old, slow, less dense technologies, then so be it.

Remember that RAMBUS isn't out to make anything, just monopolize the technology. Even their supposedly propietary technology is just a rehash of what people used to do in the old days (the bus that we're all used to is actually a very modern invention, dating from the early 70s -- before that memory was wired up RAMBUS style).
Rambus has to be the worst thing to happen to the computer industry. I'd like to say that the computer industry needs to set up a committee to find a open memory standard with no patent ties, but that's how we got here in the first place because Rambus lacks ethics. Can we expect memory prices to rebound to the levels we saw in the 90s?
And Rambus is a big part of the problem. Just check out the list of actual patents that were awarded by the USPTO for some really stupid stuff: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/crazy.html 
Given that the new President is an avid fan of the Blackberry and RIM's recent patent troubles, hopefully he will be inspired to fix some of this mess. As for Rambus, I like many wish they would die a slow horrible agonizing death by the very same litigious conduct they have practiced over the years (Now that would be JUSTICE!).
Why they f**k dont they dramurai just get together and buy out rambus and end this bloody shenanigans once and for all.