Submitted by “Rambus, a designer of memory and interface technologies, on Wednesday accused a list of companies of patent infringements again. The company accused the defendants of illegal usage of memory-related intellectual property and said that the semiconductor companies infringe its rights by implementing a number of widely used industrial standards. The tech designer demands ITC to stop importation of chips that infringe its patents and products on their base.”
No surprise.
Goodbye RAMBUS, glad I went with DDR along with the rest of the world 10 years ago.
Good luck with that. They are claiming ownership of DDR PCI-E SATA etc. They claim you need a license from them to sell a “Personal Computer” or any device with such hardware. Good times ahead.
it’s back to the stone age, it seems.
“said that the semiconductor companies infringe its rights by implementing a number of widely used industrial standards”
is it just me, or doesn’t that contradict itself?
if something is a widely used standard, how can it infringe on copyrights by just being implemented?
That question would hold if “a widely used standard” was equivalent to “an open royalty-free and patent-free specification”. But I can’t say whether it is or not. Someone who has that knowledge will answer.
Although not an identical situation, CDs are still widely used but they have been invented by companies that have (had?) patents on the technologies involved. Widely used, standard, yet patented and all manufacturers have (had?) to pay royalties… I guess. Someone else will confirm or refute the example.
They do not infringe on copyrights but on hardware patents. There are many standards in this world which are encumbered by either software or hardware patents – or both.
Software patents are non-issue for me since I’m living in Denmark, but hardware patents do apply. Considering the effect on the market if Rambus prevails I’m guessing the court will be quite lenient towards the accused companies.
you’d think so but that’s because we are not insane, money-grubbing assholes “working” for Rambus.
Rambus did the _EXACT_ same thing about ten years ago.
I am going to draft a patent covering, very vaguely, various thought processes utilized to come up with stupid court cases regarding copyright and patent law.
Then, every time I see evidence that my patent has been violated, I will file suit in every court possible.
This might get fun!!
–The loon
PS: I beat RAMBUS on many of their patents, publicly, by years. Then again, so did pretty much every one else: umm.. why don’t we just use multiplying of the bus frequency on the memory pathways? Doing more instructions per clock than the bus speed???
Yup… strong patents there…
Edited 2010-12-03 15:26 UTC
Why did they wait so long for the technology to be so pervasive to sue? Isn’t there some limitation of time frame if you don’t actively try to protect your patent?
Because they’re running out of money and need a quick extortion plan.
sitting here and I realized I’m sitting deeper and deeper into my chair. This type of news sucks the life out of me. Well….maybe not life but definitely the fun.
Now, my question: sitting on my ass what can we as OSnews readers do with this information?
…the question is not specific to only this article.
While you guys think about that, I’m gonna make some friends on PS3 online games.
WHY in the name of everything will this company never die? They are the SCO of pc hardware, just put down this rabid dog allready!
As a chip designer (okay x chip designer) quite familiar with this company and the companies they like to sue I don’t know what to make of them anymore.
One of my favorite companies out there is Unipixel, a company I would like the whole world to know about because they have an LCD killer technology that if they ever ship would produce panels from tiny to huge that would be closer to 60% optically efficient vs LCD <5%. That means brightness with very low power LEDs and much lower production costs. They did a license deal with Samsung in 09 and I am still waiting for news.
The news came, recently they did another deal with Rambus but it looks like they are after the back-lighting part as an entry way into flat panel LED lighting. They also bought another LED lighting company too.
If you think DDR was big, wait till planar [i][/i]LED lighting takes off, lots of interesting tech coming along too, and Rambus will be there too with licensing!!!