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Micron sues Rambus for antitrust violations 65

Posted by sengan from the wonder-what-intel-thinks dept.
darkrot writes "According to the Micron website, Micron is suing Rambus for violations of antitrust laws, as well as asserting its non-infringement and the invalidity of Rambus' patents." So far Hitachi and Toshiba have settled with Rambus. Toshiba still makes RAMs, so its settlement with Rambus was odd in that it could only spur on Rambus to sue more people. This suit might reduce the attraction of business models based on generating patents and suing, rather than bringing products to market. Update: 08/29 07:03 PM by S :Oops: "settled with Rambus" not Micron.
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Micron sues Rambus for antitrust violations More

Micron sues Rambus for antitrust violations

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  • None, Rambus doesn't make anything therefore cannot violate any patents the suit is about antitrust laws and also asserts invalidity, non-infringement, and non-enforceability of Rambus patents pursuant to a number of different bases.

  • In other news: (Score:4)

    by Denor ( 89982 ) <denor@yahoo.com> on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:15AM (#818930) Homepage
    Segfault sues Slashdot posters over fake lawsuit posts

    DISASSOCIATED PRESS - Dozens were shocked today as popular geek humor site Segfault sued numerous posters to popular geek new site Slashdot over posts which they claim "directly infringe upon our content".
    "Segfault has long since been the home for parodies of lawsuits. Why, even recently we had to politely hint [segfault.org] that we've been recieving too many!" commented resident Segfault PR hack Bymer Klairich, "As such, if others create their own lawsuit parodies, this will severely damage our ability to ship our own version of the product. Effective immediately, we're going to shut those freeloaders down!"
    Aside from "firewalling ports", "using block lists", and various other technical-sounding terms of various feasability, Segfault plans to begin enforcing its patent on fake lawsuits.
    "Patent INT_MAX - 4, 'Method for cheap laughter involving legal parody of the USPTO' is clearly in violation here. As soon as we end the current fake lawsuit we're facing over it, we plan to prosecute these posters to the fullest extent of the law."

  • especially when the suggestion has some merit, although we don't need to shoot Micron.
  • I don't like that at all! I don't want to have to wonder why, even though we created Rambus, it keeps trying to save us.

    "Maybe there's a little bit of Rambus in all of us."

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    (Sorry, saw Godzilla 2000 recently, couldn't help it)
  • This suit might reduce the attraction of business models based on generating patents and suing, rather than bringing products to market.

    Hey, no one's allowed to do that without paying me royalties!

    Method and Apparatus for Business Model to Acquire Revenue with no Innovation or Societal Contribution of Any Kind

    U.S. Patent #6,251,666

    Step 1: Generate a bogus business-model patent, like this one.
    Step 2: Sue everyone else who accidentally uses it.
  • Rambus is only the most vivid example of a vile corporate tactic: the development of proprietary standards. By engaging in contracts with Intel, Toshiba, and Hyundai, Rambus has attempted to create a worldwide standard in DRAM and receive all of the royalties (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter estimates that these royalties would go in excess of $1 billion if all is settled).

    However, resistance to the tactics by Rambus, and testing that proves Rambus is inferior to DDR SDRAM, the entire Rambus concept has soured. Intel is stuck with either a dead elephant on its back, or a legal situation resulting in breach of contract (I'd root for the latter, since Rambus may die soon anyway). If you have something to say to Rambus, send it here [mailto]. If you have something negative to say, don't flame; instead, explain why Rambus is inferior, and better yet, cite examples.

  • DDR-RAM is easily the next generation of memory technology if you look at the specs. RDRAM has problems with latency and production that SDRAM never had. And, if you make a chipset that uses dual channels(like the i840 chipset does with RDRAM) DDR will blow away anything Rambus has to offer with less heat, less latency and reduced cost due to more efficient production. However, if RAMBUS wins the lawsuits with Infineon and Micron, then they will be charging royalties for the technology. As far as I've read, they are charging higher royalties on DDR then they are charging for RDRAM. If that's the case, then prices for DDR will go up, and if they manage to get pushed higher then RAMBUS mem, who is to say which will be on top. I will never buy that RDRAM crap, but the sheep in the world probably will.
  • DUE TO THE resistance to the tactics by Rambus, and testing that proves Rambus is inferior to DDR SDRAM, the entire Rambus concept has soured

    There, that's better. Figures, only previewed for the HTML.

  • Different company. They own part or eachother, but this company is Micron Technoligies, and the company selling PCs is called Micron Electronics. I got to see the fab facilities in Boise once. They're very cool.
  • SENGAN!?!?!?

    Where have YOU been?

    Damn....
  • http://www.electronicnews.com/news/4466-242NewsDet ail.asp

    A little wager: They won't settle, and Rambus will win in court. Not fair, but patent law seldom is.

    BTW, with regard to MU and Rambus, it's personal:

    http://www.wsaccess.com/theStreet/tech/semis/728 055.html
  • Kid: "Mr. Owl, how many lawsuits does it take to get to the center of Slashdot?"

    Owl: "Let's find out... One.. Two.. Three [CRUNCH!]. Three.

    The world may never know...

    Why does it seem like latley the only news coming out of technology today is some sort of litigation? Three posts on lawsuits in one day? That's got to be a record. No offence (and you can mod me down if you want to), but has it come to "No news is good news, unless it's court related"? I would rather talk about what these comanpies are releasing then what these companies are doing to each other. Just my opinion...
  • A light-nanosecond is exactly .299792458 meters, or about one foot, for those not up on it.
  • >There is a big difference between your two example systems. Rambus is bumping up against the speed of light, your sewer system is not.

    Good god, I hope the bizarre mental imagine this is creating is not being forced upon the rest of the readers.

    On the other hand, sanitation workers can now discuss topics that were once solely in the realm of theoretical physics.

    "Ok, normally a town needs huge waste pipes, but if we modify toilets by adding super dense toroids moving at 99% of the speed of light, in opposite direction of each other, we should be able to create a wormhole....."
  • Just wait until all the pissed interdimensional beings come for dumping all our shit on them...

  • Yes. You can expect a letter from my lawyer concerning the emotional trauma you caused me by subjecting me to your so-called 'signature'. The unexpected thought of that evil individual has caused me much emotional distress, and has affected my work performance.

    And I'm not a fan of Hitler, either.

  • Every corporation (for some reason that still eludes me) tends to incorporate in Deleware. Don't ask me why, since almost *none* of them have their HQ in the state. (For an example of this Deleware habit, look at the MPAA vs. 2600 legal documents that have the full listing of the plaintiffs-- almost all of them end with a statement along the lines of "a corporation lawfully incorporated in the state of Deleware".)

    My personal guesses so far?

    A. It's cheaper to register as a business in Deleware (Wow, look Mr. CEO, we saved $5 on this business registration, won't our investors just LOVE that!).

    B. Something to do with tax laws perhaps?

    C. Something to do with more favorable state laws with relation to business?

    If anyone has any ideas as to why 75% of businesses incorporate in Deleware, I'd be curious to know the *real* answer.

    As for the lawsuit: I'm glad someone is finally fighting Rambus on all of it's BS-- claiming to own patents on technology that has been around and in use this long is utterly absurd, especially considering how Rambus acquired those technologies (EG: JEDEC).

  • "Don't even think about mixing vendors on the same board"

    Until very recently Samsung was the only one making any real quantities of RDRAM (for the PC market, Toshiba is producing for the PS2) so multivendor compatability hasn't really been tested.
  • i'm damn sure that i'm going to use micron ram in my next upgrade. i'm sick of this patent bulls**t and am glad that someone is standing up to it.
  • People hate Rambus because there was an attempt to force it down their throats when nobody wanted it. Thankfully that effort was largely crushed and is a good deal of the reason why AMD is doing so well these days.

    After that didn't work, Rambus went out and started suing SDRAM makers, with the basic idea being to get royalties for no real reason other then that they own patents which they shouldn't own in the first place. They wanted to make money off their overpriced Ram, and that didn't work, so now they want to make money off the backs of the SDRAM makers without actually doing anything to earn it except for having aggressive lawyers.

    Yeah, thats really the kind of thing we want to encourage.
  • Does this include Transmeta?
  • Oops. comanpies=companies. Apologies go out to the spelling police.
  • No it isn't. If it was flamebait, where are the flame responses? I just expressed my support for anyone going to court against (as the slashdot story said) a company who's business plan involves getting a patent and sueing people.
  • ...cause I can find a better use for gold than I can for that proprietary load.
  • For a minute, I thought he was wrong. But this poses a simple question that defies the current Rambus architecture: Why not widen the bus to 64- or 128-bit? This WDRDRAM would be the fastest (and most expensive) ram on earth. But there's another problem: the packet strategy. Packeting is okay for unreliable connections, like networking. But on a connection that's bound to be up and working all the time (the memory bus), it's redundant and wasteful. How many times has your memory bus failed during operation? (Intel 820 owners, don't answer this one! lol). Chances are, you either never had, or you did the ultimate solution, good ol' reboot. I highly doubt that the Rambus packet structure would do anything beneficial, as its only currently known effect on speed is negative.

    Going back to my MWRA analogy, it's like wrapping turds in maxipads and flushing them. It's an unnecessary waste.

  • This one from FiringSquad's RAM guide (no, I don't know the URL, search if you're so desperate):

    "...remember how SDRAM transmitted data in 64 bit increments? Well DRDRAM does it with only 16 bits. So it's fast, but has a smaller bus size. This overall increases memory bandwidth, but also latency. Just think of smaller chunks (1/4 size) moving at much higher speed. Is this much better or faster?"

    As soon as I read this, I thought of the MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, those kooks in control of our sewers) making a similar change to the sewer system (not that they have, thank god.)

    Imagine that they change the sewer pipe diameter from the standard size (1 to 2 meters, I think, I've never been in a sewer pipe, thankfully) to something 1/4 the diameter. Their primary purpose is to watch the turds shoot out with high velocity at the end. Of course, this introduces much sewage backlogging and latency, and would result in 5 toilet explosions daily. The pipes are lined with stainless steel and cost $90,000 per 5-meter length; about 3 million of these would be installed throughout the MWRA's jurisdiction of the Commonwealth. The MWRA, of course, would claim that the speed of the flying turds should highly outweigh the backlogging and explosion problems. Nevertheless, disgruntled MWRA customers would plan for a "Boston Turd Party."

    Just a vivid (and hilarious) analogy.

  • Here's my reasons for hating Rambus:

    Different speeds of RDRAM; makes upgrading a thousand-dollar nightmare.

    High-latency hardware (in the ideal computer, NO hardware should have any noticeable latency!)

    Proprietary standards; obviously, Rambus is attempting to cash in by forcing it on us.

    THAT'S why I hate Rambus.

  • I should start a spoof site with that. I got a pretty good logo idea: merge two circles to form a full moon and have "arse" in it.
  • ..."so far, Hitachi and Toshiba have settled with Rambus"?

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Anyone care to put a link to any site / slashdot article / whatever with more information? Who started suing who, over what?

  • Micron does have big brass ones, don't they? (Score:3)

    by Snocone ( 158524 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:03AM (#818959) Homepage
    Micron's always displayed a fair bit of spunk for a RAM maker, especially when somebody disses them [micron.com] but also when they see a chance to put the boot in [micron.com].

    This ought to be very interesting :)
  • Does anyone know any real details?

    --
  • Rambus is just evil plain old evil but then again we have been over all of that here. Let's hope the judge makes the right ruling and words it broadly enough to make the patent office pull it's head out.
  • Yah, that one got me really confused

  • Rambus on JEDEC (Score:5)

    by OneWhoKnows ( 155651 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:05AM (#818963)
    The "problem" is that Rambust owns patents on SDRAM. They were part of the JEDEC committee, while at the same time patenting the core technologies being finalized. If this isn't conflict of interest, I don't know how else to define it. The biggest problem with Rambust is not that it is expensive, but that it doesn't work well. The technology is immature and flaky. Don't even think about mixing vendors on the same board. Also, it is not only the PC-800 that has problems. It is not like SDRAM, whereby faster chips run better in slower systems. There are problems across the board. It's just that Rambus isn't so popular that these problems have not come out. If you buy a Rambus-based system, buy one from a first tier vendor, or you'll be sorry.

  • Micron vs. Rambus - Godzilla vs. Mothra? (Score:4)

    by laetus ( 45131 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:23AM (#818964)
    I don't know if these two corporate names sound funny to you, but hearing Micron vs. Rambus sounds alot like Godzilla vs. Mothra.

    For example, "Rambus was resting deep beneath the ocean, the warm salty waters healing it after its fight with Mothra. Soon, though, the citizens of Tokyo would be rushing frantic through the streets. Why? Unbenownst to them, an evil Sony game developer, trying to learn the secret of MS's new Xbox gamestation, opened the case of a development version of the Xbox, stolen from Redmond.

    Sadly, the Gatesians had rigged all development copies of the Xbox with a failsafe device, that would irradiate every chip inside the box as well as anything within a 20 foot radius.

    Within that 20 foot radius was the developer and a small fly that flew onto the Xbox's main CPU when the radiation hit. Thus born of the radiation was "Micron", a 50 foot fly with the brains of a Pentium III.

    And as monsters are wont, Micron began destroying and gobling up small software and hardware companies throughout Tokyo, eventually awakening Rambus from its sleep to emerge from the ocean deeps to fight Micron in the streets of Tokyo."

    No more caffiene for me today. Thanks.

    EMUSE.NET [emuse.net]
  • I don't see this suit discouraging many companies from this business model. Licensing patents is a bit like playing the stock market--it is risky and you could lose your shirt, but there are big potential payoffs.

    Unlike individual investing in the stock market, though, a company with no real costs (just lawyers to track the licenses) does not have much to lose.
  • I've been waiting for this one to drop. Now, if it would just squish Rambux then we can all enjoy cheep DDR SDRAM in a few months! ;-)

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
  • Who's Scott?

    Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]

  • I have a complete system that I purchased from Micron, and I have only good things to say about it.

    --
  • Who's Vladinator? I sense a very unfortueate coincidence...

    Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]

  • Now now, your post is the one that is fake -- we all know that Segfault isn't popular with anyone. (j/k)
  • About your sig...yes their Hockey Team does suck. Go Flyers.

  • I will certainly buy Micron memory for my new T-Bird 900 upgrade I'm planning. Vote with your wallet, buy products from companies that stand up for what is right, and (as Sony's Veep Heckler would suggest), firewall the ones that cave at your wallet. RamBUST inc's patent claims will fail on two fronts. First, their membership in JEDEC precluded them from secretly patenting IP that the JEDEC group was involved in. RAMBUST did not disclose patents they had applied for on SDRAM technology (as they were required to), and IMO, probably kept that secret for the sole purpose of influencing JEDEC to adopt a SDRAM standard containing patented RAMBUST IP. Second, anti-trust. This is like giving a mafia don a cut of every dollar spent in a vital industry. RAMBUST is bad for technology. First, they failed to RAM inferior yet mega-expensive technology up our collective arses, then failing that they are going to try to collect on SDRAM technology that they never developed, marketed, or produced.
  • That is the main point. RAMBUST memory is inferior to cheaper PC133 SDRAM and certainly will be embarassed by DDR SDRAM. Yet they are trying to create sucess for inferior technology no one in particular wants, that is too expensive by using IP and lawyers. They are attempting this by controlling licensing on the compeditor so as to artificially make DDR more expensive than it has to be so as to make RAMBUST more attractive. RAMBUS has disclosed in the Hitachi and Toshiba settlements that the royalty for DDR is higher than RAMBUST.
  • You are correct. The patent-IP then sue business model "pioneered" by RAMUS inc will encourage others. Especially when one of the large established megacorps (Microsoft, Intel) catch on and try the same thing. One day there may be more lawyers than engineers employed at "leading" technology companies.
  • RAMBUS chose it's first attacks carefuly to make it's claim seem stronger than it is. Toshiba is the main supplier of RDRAM for Nintendo. They were offered a "sweet" deal on royalty to cave. Hitatchi was prepared to fight it out, and had counter-sued in much the way that Micron is now, but they were set to sell their memory business, and to close the deal they had to settle. Note that Hitachi's settlement becomes null and void when it changes ownership. The next RAMUS suit was against a foreign company, that will be at a disadvantage in the wacky US federal courts. Now they face a real monster, Micron, a REAL company with REAL engineering, REAL assets, REAL production that could buy or bury RAMUS in REAL assets many times over.
  • Delaware has the largest body of case law relating to corporate matters of any state in the US, hands down. Therefore, if you incorporate in Delaware, you will know what the law is going to be with a good degree of certainty. If you incorporate in Wyoming, there is going to be a lot less case law, putting you at the mercy of a judge flying blind at trial with little or no precedent to guide him.
  • This could be a bad sign for future tech... Outside of the GNU/Open Source community and AMD, I've not seen much innovation other than new and creative lawsuits.
  • I think Micron can kick their collective asses in court without our help/money... but I accept donations... =)
  • Following up to my own post: Here's a story on CNET. [cnet.com] And one on Yahoo. [yahoo.com]
    --

  • Re:Confused... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Rambus made stupid broad patents because they knew their shitty RAM technology was a bust, so they started suing other RAM manufacturers saying they were infrining on their patents, so they could drive up prices for working RAM technologies and sell their shitty Rambus crap. Hitachi and Toshiba caved in to Rambus and agreed to pay them royalties, but apparently Micron wants to fight it out in an anti-trust case... GO MICRON

  • Re:don't you mean... (Score:3)

    by Sanchi ( 192386 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:09AM (#818981)
    Yes Hitachi and Toshiba have settled with Rambus. But the reason that they did is for compleatly different reasons all togeather.

    Toshiba is the suplier for the RDRAM and the PS2 uses, and when you have an order that large, you will do anything to keep it. (Including selling your soul to the devil, or RAMBUS in this case)

    Hitachi settled after they has sold there ram facilitys to NEC. Hitachi doesnt make ram any more.

    All in all I think that it is about time for RAMBUS to get there ass whooped.

    P.S. I May have gotten Hitachi and Toshiba mixed up, cant remember quite clearly.

    Sanchi
  • This would make sense. Today is apparently "Everybody Sues Everybody Else" day.

    Have you sued someone today?

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • They're probably incorporated in Delaware. Better tax laws, particularly for LLC's.

  • This isn't a case of a little old lady being sold bunk stock in a gold mine in the Yucatan. It's a couple of hightech corps that should have done their due diligence. If anything I'm mad at Hitachi, Toshiba, Intel et al for falling for this all this Rambus bullshit and then trying to make us pay them for their mistake.

    Hitachi and Toshiba bowed before Rambus because the extortion is negligble compared to legal costs and perceived PR cost.

    Intel held/holds stock in Rambus (read: conflict of interest)

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000

  • I believe it is because of Delaware's more friendly laws towards incorporating businesses. A very large percentage of national corps incorporate in Delaware because the laws there favor them if they ever get sued by customers. I'm unsure how this would affect a corp vs. corp legal battle, but it's moot in this case as the suit was filed in federal court.

    Mainly, I'm curious over what patents were supposedly violated...

    Kierthos
  • There is also a story at SemiBizNews [semibiznews.com] and here [individual.com]
    Course when I submitted it this morning it was rejected within seconds. Odd thing that.
  • That's because this story requires too much thought for Taco/Hemos/etc. It's not about anime or Macs, so only Sengan, "The forgotten Slashdot author," would dare post it.

    Either that or everyone at slashdot HQ hates you.

    Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]

  • And the Correct answer is ... C

    Delaware is a very friendly state to businesses

    Sanchi

  • Re:Why is this in Delaware? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try looking at http://www.delbusinc.com/del7-3.html
  • The patents others are supposedly infringing are that Rambus were part of the working group that came up with (DDR) SDRAM. While participating they also happened to patent most of the core technology...
    Now that their RDRAM technology is failing market interest, due to high cost and flaky functionality, they sue SDRAM manufacturers to bring SDRAM prices up to RDRAM levels.
  • although I submitted it a lot later, hehe.

    Apparently these things get pretty queued up, so the first person to submit it may have done so a long time ago.

    Ah well, I'm still happy with the one story that got posted with my name attached to it. :-)
  • I was seriously dismayed that RAMBUS, seeing that it's technology was losing the battle badly, decided that if they can't win, they are going to try to extort revenues out of all other DRAM manufacturers. I was shocked that Hitachi and Toshiba buckled without much of a fight; numerous corporations have been making SDRAM for years before RAMBUS came on to the scene. I'm putting my money on DDR SDRAM for the next generation RAM technology, as it's cheap and higher performance that the expensive, high-latency, high-clocked serial RAMBUS modules.

    "Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
  • There sure seems to be alot of hate towards Rambus... the way I see it, the company has a crappy product (not fully developed at best). And they got alot of other large companies to buy in to their idea and now those other companies (Hitachi and Toshiba to name a few) are pissed off because the product isn't all it was advertised to be.

    This isn't a case of a little old lady being sold bunk stock in a gold mine in the Yucatan. It's a couple of hightech corps that should have done their due diligence. If anything I'm mad at Hitachi, Toshiba, Intel et al for falling for this all this Rambus bullshit and then trying to make us pay them for their mistake.

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