Court case shocker: Judge rules in favor of Rambus, not NVIDIA... sort of
By Laura June 
posted January 23rd 2010 5:11PM
posted January 23rd 2010 5:11PM
Rambus, a company that has been in a long, drawn out legal battle with NVIDIA over five patents for what seems like ages now, had some good news delivered to it late last week. A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission issued a preliminary determination finding that NVIDIA had indeed violated three of the five patents -- ruling that the other two had not been violated. Now, NVIDIA says that the whole patent mystery continues to be a subject ripe for reexamination by the Patent and Trademark Office -- which has consistently found the claims of infringement to be invalid. NVIDIA says it will take the claims to a full commission for a final decision. You'll probably remember that these five patent infringement claims were part of a much larger suit that Rambus filed against NVIDIA -- some of which were dropped earlier this month. Will it never end?
"Your license to speed" nice.
@werty1432k
++ for puns
#$%&£ RAMBUS !!!!
These a**holes are a cancer to tech and never contributed anything to it except some overpriced ram that quickly faded away mid 90s!
They make their livin for decades just sueing and settling.
I suspect nowadays rambus is basically a law firm.
Honestly from all the patents and suing going around
did you guys ever think of making a dedicate site for it, like Engadget Law, or something
@8th Gamer
In the Country of Europe a Patent system do not exist and illegal.
America should copy that idea.
What are patents good for? as a consumer? nothing
@GoogleCEO
Yeah we don't have these patent laws. It just seems silly for a company to lock down ideas like this - in regards to the consumer, at least. It just slows development of the product if one company just sits on it for a gazillion years just because they have the rights to.
@GoogleCEO
"Country of Europe"? Are you Miss South Carolina?
@GoogleCEO
Without patents the technology would advance at a much slower pace.
Why would anybody spends billions of dollars/year for achieving something that the john doe next door is going to copy for free, how does he pays for the development costs?
Microsoft: Over US$ 5Bi/year in R&D
Apple: Over US$ 1Bi/year
Intel: US$ 5Bi/year
and so on...
I don't think Intel would spend 5bi if AMD could just copy whatever the output is...
And EU does have patents just like here...
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/
@a698ss
Your correct in that patents are a must, but there current implementation is flawed. I believe a 1 year hold on a patent is all that should be allowed without a renewal , That is enough time for a company to make a head start and capitalize on its ideas.
But currently patents are also used to hold back technology, the auto, oil, battery, ect... industries use it to keep us locked into technology that is stagnant. The electric car would have been here years ago without patents getting in the way. We would have batteries that last longer and with less being thrown into the trash.
@a698ss China don't need to stinking patents! *copy-stamp-copy-stamp*
@a698ss
I'd rather technology slow to a complete halt than see even a single freedom destroyed.
What companies should do is make it extremely difficult for anything to be reverse-engineered. Obfuscate every single aspect of the design, and don't document it to anybody. Radically change the entire architecture with every single SKU so that reverse-engineering one model won't give you a head start on reverse-engineering the next. Invest in processes so microscopic that analyzing it will require the most expensive machines in the world. Put booby traps in the product so if anyone tries to take it apart or even disable the trap, it literally blows up in their face.
@jgp
And it would still require a 1mi bonus to hire a chief engineer and get everything...
IP is not only obtained trough reverse engineering, but information is leaked trough employees changing jobs, hacks, or some smart ass that do it for fun.
If you like company A IP, just buy their product for their feature... I see it as a perfectly healthy competition, makes company B to have to develop something even better to keep their customers.
@a698ss
Oh, and drastically change the entire architecture from product A to B?
You ALWAYS want to leverage your platforms unless it really needs a revamp.
time to get out of the LAN house and get back to the real world.
Go develop a hardware/software from scratch and see how much time/money it would take
@jgp
Was that sarcasm? Yeah, let's put DRM on EVERYTHING!
/s
Er, wasn't this the US ITC, not a court of law, that ruled on this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_International_Trade_Commission
That is, this _wasn't_ a court case.
End soon enough after the rambus people are lynched during some revolution, and whatever happens in that revolution; at least that worked out OK.
"Will it never end?"
Will Dr. Dre ever get tired of the product placing my headphones in everything he stars in?
Will Engadget ever stop reporting Apple rumours?
"a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution come"
Rambus patents should all be invalidated. They proposed standards to a JEDEC standards body, which are supposed to be free of any patent claims, and didn't reveal their pending patents until after the standards were approved and implemented. It's fraud. They are worse than patent trolls.
But then again, we have a supreme court that believes that paper entities (organizations that are just virtual objects created by a set of contracts) are due the same free speech rights as humans. So maybe I'm expecting too much.
No patent system in Europe? What does the Euopean patent office do then?
The name US INTERNATIONAL Trade Commission is a bit contradictory right? Kind of like the World Series
I don't see why all the chipmakers don't just pool their resources, buy 100% of Rambus' shares, renounce all their patents, and dissolve the company.
It would save them money in the long run, as they'd never have to deal with a Rambus suit again.
@jgp
And for extra spite, they should take every single object in Rambus' headquarters (including the building itself), reduce them to their raw materials, and sell them on the open market (e.g. sell all the metal to scrapyards).
I'm sure that all the plaques in Rambus' office will be worth something to someone once they're all melted down and converted into raw materials.
Kill from the Grave< is Rambus just pissed off that their ram tech was so outrageously overpriced that only a small fraction of nerds threw down way back when to have the fast ram when bus speeds were still slow~ ram that bus!