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Freescale agrees to pay a licensing fee to Rambus
PATENT HOARDER Rambus has signed a patent licensing agreement with Freescale Semiconductor that covers Rambus memory controller and serial link patents.
The agreement brings to an end a lawsuit filed by Rambus against Freescale in December of last year for patent infringement. Freescale decided to settle with Rambus and pay a licensing fee instead of dragging the case through the courts, which might have ultimately proven more costly, particularly given Rambus' overall record of success at winning patent court cases.
Freescale uses the patented memory controllers and serial links at issue here in many of its integrated circuit logic products, which would have faced a possible import ban if the Rambus lawsuit was successful.
The agreement also covers Freescale's past use of the technology, ensuring that the company will not have to pay any fines for allegedly infringing Rambus patents. It's not clear if Rambus simply let the past infringement slide in order to reach the agreement or if the agreement involves a back payment of licensing fees for the period where Freescale was supposedly using unlicensed Rambus technology. Rambus is not talking about the terms of the agreement.
Rambus has gained a negative reputation in the past for its hoarding of patents and its many lawsuits against technology companies it accused of infringing them. When it brought its case against Freescale it also took on Broadcom, LSI, Mediatek and the GPU giant Nvidia, despite Nvidia having previously agreed to pay a licensing fee for other Rambus patents. Now that Freescale has buckled under the pressure, it's more likely that we'll see others signing deals with Rambus soon.
Financial terms of the agreement between Rambus and Freescale have not been revealed, but we can expect that Freescale paid a pretty penny for the ability to use Rambus patented technology in its products.
The agreement will last for five years, after which time the parties will negotiate a new deal. µ
Tags: Hardware
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But the real story will come out in the antitrust trial scheduled to start jury selection tomorrow.
You can only amend a patent to add claims if the claims are covered by your original application. In Rambus' case, their patents that cover Rambus technology used in sdram and DDR have a priority date of 1990. JEDEC knew it was Rambus tech, but no one wanted to pay for it. Mitsubishi Electric reviewed Rambus' first patents, and said that Rambus could, and probably would file additional claims that would cover sdram.
The document destruction is a red herring that has been flown around with abandon by the anti-rambus crowd. Years before the patents issued Rambus started a document retention program, like many companies do, and cleaned the office of old files, printouts, etc, telling the pack-rat engineers to "look for things to keep". When they moved their offices they again held a big clutter reduction, telling people again to look for things to keep.
The FTC said in their persecution of Rambus that the documents Rambus provided gave an extraordinary insight into actions at Rambus. The judge in the micron case (who immediately after ruling in Micron's favor was the keynote speaker at an FTC conference) said that Rambus destroyed documents as evidenced by documents that Micron produced. Rambus pointed out to no avail that Rambus had provided those documents to Micron in the first place.
Rambus has been the victim of an industry that said "someday all computers will be built like this, hopefully without the royalties going to Rambus". The industry recognized that Rambus had revolutionary technology, but didn't want to pay for it. Instead, they colluded to cherrypick Rambus technology for sdram and later DDR, and then to drive RDRAM from the market by lowering the cost of sdram and DDR to below cost, while keeping RDRAM prices artificially high.
Jury selection starts tomorrow, wait fro opening statements in a couple of weeks.
Question: What PRODUCTS that RAMBUS actually makes does ANYONE infringe upon?
Answer: NONE!!! Rambus DOESN'T MAKE ANYTHING!
Look up the term "Patent Troll" and you will find all the information you need to know about Rambus (If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...).
Kill it! Kill it with Fire!!!
Obviously you must have shares in Rambus! Rambus went to the JEDEC meetings and then amended their patents to cover what they had discovered in those meetings, knowing full well that it was too late to change for JEDEC.
You will notice that while they have been allowed to get away with this highway robbery in the US, in Europe and the Rest of the world , they have been told quyite rightly to go take a running jump off a short pier!.
And lets not even begin with their shredding of documents pertaining to the the litigation between them and Micron I believe.
They are a failed company with a failed technology who were passed by, and have used the broken patent system in the US to rip off the memeory industry , the sooner they fade away into the dust bin of history the better , a truly truly utterly worthless company!
Rambus designed the features now used by all synchronous dram memories before they ever set foot in JEDEC. In fact, they attended their last JEDEC meeting in December 1995, formally resigning in June 1996. Why did Rambus resign? Because Rambus wanted to present their technology to JEDEC for standardization, but were refused the opportunity to do so. The ONLY company that Gordon Kelly of JEDEC blocked from presenting.
Jedec didn't start on DDR until later in 1996. Rambus was never a member, or attended JEDEC meetings during DDR development. JEDEC even admitted later that in making DDR, they "took the work of groups like Rambus and SLDRAM, and made it our own". Rambus filed additional claims and continuation patents that covered how their technology was being used in DDR, fully legal and encouraged by patent law.
The fact is that Rambus' designs were being stolen by JEDEC and Rambus had to file lawsuits to be compensated for their inventions. If you ever invent something, wouldn't you want to be paid?
Interesting that Mr Dean makes no mention that Freescale was in fact guilty of infringing Rambus patents. Freescale admitted this when they filed an Amici brief with the FTC in it's case against Rambus. Instead of providing facts he prefers name calling, patent hoarder of all things. And when Mr Dean says others will follow Freescale I'm sure he knows that Broadcom has also previously admitted they are also infringing Rambus patents.
Jim
Rambus sat in on the JEDEC meetings with the rest of the memory manufacturers when they (JEDEC) agreed to the specifications for the DDR standard. Rampus promptly patented the specifications that they gleaned from the meetings then went off suing the companies that were at the meeting. This is the definition of slime.
Dean,
How is wanting to be paid for your IP,...and fighting litigants in court for infringement of your IP "hoarding patients."
Gary