Navigate: Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home	.	.
CPU Intel P4 840 D P4 820 D P4 630 P4 640 P4 650 P4 660 P4 670 AMD Athlon64 3500+ 3700+ 3800+ 4000+ X2-3800+ X2-4200+ X2-4400+ X2-4600+ X2-4800+ 1-Way Opteron Opteron 144 Opteron 146 Opteron 148 Opteron 150 Opteron 152 2-Way Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Opteron 248 Opteron 250 Opteron 252 2-Way Dual Core Opteron Opteron 270 Opteron 275 nVidia GF 7800GT GF 6800GT GF 6600GT ATI R X850 XT PE R X850 XT R X800 XT PE R X800 XT R X800 XL Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ What are you shopping for?

Of course, the twist of the situation is that according to JEDEC guidelines as outlined above, any patent application pending needs to be accompanied by offering a royalty-free or other reasonable license. In a case like this, the DRAM industry would have had two options, namely,

• accept the licensing fee if it is considered reasonable
• if the fees are considered too high, develop a different concept, bypassing the rights covered by the patents.

The disclosure of the patent rights never happened until the standards were fully adopted. At this point SDRAM had become the main memory interface for personal computers, to be complemented and, eventually, succeeded by DDR RAM. In other words, under the false shelter of the JEDEC disclosure policy, manufacturers had spent billions of $ in R&D and production facilities. Interesting in this regard is that Rambus themselves do not manufacture any products but that the sole source of income is derived from royalties and licensing fees for their proprietary technologies and patents.

According to the document we obtained, the Rambus campaign is designed to exact essentially non-negotiable licenses bearing exorbitant royalties from DRAM manufacturers. Rambus has filed lawsuits against those manufacturers who do not agree to its terms.

The main points of the complaint encompass accusations of

• Willful acquisition and maintenance of monopoly power ... in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
• Breach of contractual obligations to disclose its relevant patent applications.
• Defraudation of Micron and other JEDEC members.
• Engagement in deceptive trade practices, negligent misrepresentation and conduct warranting application of equitable estopped.

Further, the transcript transpires that the exorbitant licensing fees demanded by Rambus would serve the purpose of increasing the market prices for SDRAM /DDR DRAM to the point where Rambus RDRAM would become competitive on the basis of its price, rather than the purpose of directly increasing the revenues for Rambus through the royalties collected.

We have contacted Rambus but were unable to get any feedback on this matter, therefore, the view presented here may contain a certain bias but it will certainly be interesting to see how this story develops.

next page:    => more =>