Who owns patents of DRAM, EDO RAM, SDRAM, DDR RAM, DDR2 RAM?

[Ar Q]

I only know Rambus invented RDRAM. Besides that, which companies or parties
invented the rest of different kinds of memory? I remember back to late
90's, RDRAM was hot when they came out and had Intel's endorsement, but
RAMBUS want to charge a lot on this technology, so the majority of memory
manufactures chose the slower and inferior DDR RAM as their main stream
products and the market eventually phased out the superior but more
expensive RDRAM.

The product died but the company did not. Recently an US judge ruled that
Hynix's DDR/DDR2 products did infringe RAMBUS's patents (I am not sure
Rambus has won the case or the judge just ruled that they can proceed to
sue) while similar law suits were tossed out in Europe. Anyway Rambus began
a new round of law suits, now they added smaller companies which manufacture
DDR or DDR2 in their list. It seems to imply DDR did use some inventions of
RDRAM. My second question is that if DDR is a cheap imitation or reverse
engineered product from RDRAM.

One related question is that if US and Europe have totally opposite outcomes
of the law suits, who will give? Does it mean Rambus can only collect the
royalty on the memory chips sold in US?

 

[Tony Hill]

I only know Rambus invented RDRAM. Besides that, which companies or parties
invented the rest of different kinds of memory?

There are dozens of different companies with a wide variety of
patents. Most play nice and have cross-licensing agreements with one
another. Rambus was a corporate scumbag and tried every dirty trick
in the book to try and prove some sort of patent infringement.

If you read some of George's messages about Rambus you'll see that he
also mentions a company called Mosaid. They actually did a lot of the
initial design work for DDR SDRAM and have a number of patents on
that. Initially companies paid them for this work, but now they are
getting in on the patent folly and are trying to sue everyone+dog as
well.

It would be interesting seeing Rambus and Mosaid go at it, since they
both claim to own patents covering the same things.

I remember back to late
90's, RDRAM was hot when they came out and had Intel's endorsement, but
RAMBUS want to charge a lot on this technology, so the majority of memory
manufactures chose the slower and inferior DDR RAM as their main stream
products and the market eventually phased out the superior but more
expensive RDRAM.

Uhh.. the term "superior" should be used VERY loosely here, given that
RDRAM was generally considered to be an INFERIOR technology by all of
those with a clue. Great bandwidth, but that did dick-all for most
applications. The latency was worse though and that was what really
mattered.

The product died but the company did not. Recently an US judge ruled that
Hynix's DDR/DDR2 products did infringe RAMBUS's patents (I am not sure
Rambus has won the case or the judge just ruled that they can proceed to
sue)

Just that they can proceed to sue.

while similar law suits were tossed out in Europe. Anyway Rambus began
a new round of law suits, now they added smaller companies which manufacture
DDR or DDR2 in their list. It seems to imply DDR did use some inventions of
RDRAM. My second question is that if DDR is a cheap imitation or reverse
engineered product from RDRAM.

IN a word: No.

Rambus is a scumbag company that is using lots of dirty tricks. Read
the patents, they're all trivial things that have been used EVERYWHERE
in technology for the past 10-15 years! Nothing unique about DDR
using the technology, it's used for things like hard drives as well.

Rambus in no way "invented" this technology, they just used the fact
that the US Patent system is *SEVERELY* flawed to get their patents
passed through as extensions of a continuation of a division of a
abandoned extension to some-guy's friends patent so that the date on
all this stuff is April of 1990. Rambus didn't come up with any of
this stuff in April of 1990 (the company was founded in March of
1990), but because of flaws in the patent system they were able to
patent widely used technology with this date.

One related question is that if US and Europe have totally opposite outcomes
of the law suits, who will give? Does it mean Rambus can only collect the
royalty on the memory chips sold in US?

It means that we'll have appeals and counter-suits until we're all
blue in the face and the ONLY people who will make any money out of
the whole deal are the lawyers.

 

[George Macdonald]

I only know Rambus invented RDRAM. Besides that, which companies or parties
invented the rest of different kinds of memory? I remember back to late
90's, RDRAM was hot when they came out and had Intel's endorsement, but
RAMBUS want to charge a lot on this technology, so the majority of memory
manufactures chose the slower and inferior DDR RAM as their main stream
products and the market eventually phased out the superior but more
expensive RDRAM.

DDR DRAM is by no means inferior to Rambus' DRDRAM and in some respects is
superior. DRDRAM was/is a low pin-count high bandwidth solution and
Rambus' main invention was the interface to the memory chips - IOW had
little to do with the memory array itself. Basically DRDRAM uses a
packetized serial communication channel which increased latency somewhat
over a bus type interface. We'll probably never know what it's full
potential or downsides in a PC were, since Intel's implementations made
modest use of the paging strategies available. The low pin count makes it
attractive for things like consumer devices like game boxes.

As for the patents on traditional DRAM, they probably number in the
hundreds if not thousands. Many of them are "traded" through
cross-licensing agreements between the necessarily large companies which
actually own the fabs and make the chips. This highlights a flaw in the IP
business model: that IP companies don't currently have to acquire any of
the hundreds/thousands of patents which their inventions depend on - IOW IP
is essentially a parasitic activity and most people cringe at the word
parasite.

The product died but the company did not. Recently an US judge ruled that
Hynix's DDR/DDR2 products did infringe RAMBUS's patents (I am not sure
Rambus has won the case or the judge just ruled that they can proceed to
sue) while similar law suits were tossed out in Europe.

I believe there was a summary judgement on 11 counts and there are still 30
or so infringements which will go to jury trial. Whether the summary
judgements can be appealed I don't know but I'd think the outcome of any
jury trial is bound to be. <sigh>There could be no end to this and more
money is going to go into the pockets of parasitic lawyers than is
decent... not to mention the pump 'n' dump stock traders.

Anyway Rambus began
a new round of law suits, now they added smaller companies which manufacture
DDR or DDR2 in their list. It seems to imply DDR did use some inventions of
RDRAM. My second question is that if DDR is a cheap imitation or reverse
engineered product from RDRAM.

Rambus' patent portfolio is simply a web of deceit fabricated by lawyers
who know how to work a deficient patent system. From an initial filing in
1990, there is a complex (unfathomable ?) tree of abandonments,
continuations, divisions and extensions - basically they want it both ways:
they want the dating of the patents to go back to the early 90s but they
also want them refreshed so that they don't expire too soon.

There used to be a rule of patents such that you could not get a patent
which consisted of combining two existing inventions - one primary example
of this was that the guy who invented the pencil with the rubber tip eraser
on the end could not get a patent on his invention. This "rule" seems to
be largely ignored now - dunno if it was ever officially retracted.

Many of the Rambus claims are simply that: use of standard, obvious, even
trivial mechanisms, like count-down registers, as applied to a memory
interface. As I understand it, things like DLLs, and DDR signalling are
hazy areas - similar mechanisms have been used as common practice in the
industry so any ruling can be argued ad nauseum. A remark from a judge who
ruled in Rambus' favor at the Infineon appeal is an interesting reflection
on their corporate behavior: "While such actions impeach Rambus's business
ethics....." IOW legally, and under IMO flawed patent rulings, they were
in the right but they are nevertheless scum.

Apparently Geoff Tate worked for AMD for 10 years, on the x86 and 29000
processors, before he founded Rambus so one has to wonder how much his
"inventions" really might belong to AMD - usually employee agreements
specify quite clearly that any inventions made while in employment, and
related to the corporation's business, belong to the corporation. Did his
ideas come to him in a dream?... after he left AMD? Did AMD drop the ball
here?

One related question is that if US and Europe have totally opposite outcomes
of the law suits, who will give? Does it mean Rambus can only collect the
royalty on the memory chips sold in US?

I'm not sure where the European patent office now stands - I recall reading
a while back that the patent offices of the individual countries were
fighting attempts by the European central bureaucracy to establish a
pan-European patent office. There were also wild disagreements on patent
policies between the various countries which was also a stumbling block to
establishing policies for any centralized decision making on patent
application processing.

Things are in a mess there too and I don't expect any ruling to be final
for years... but if the outcomes are different then I believe that what you
say is essentially true... that Rambus would only be able to collect where
they had approvals and successful court rulings. That could, of course,
lead to retaliations and trade disputes.

 

[Felger Carbon]

It would be interesting seeing Rambus and Mosaid go at it, since they
both claim to own patents covering the same things.

Tony, companies that both manufacture parts can swap patents so that
they can get on with their businesses, which is making and selling
parts.

Neither Rambus nor Mosaid make parts. They cannot swap patents with
companies that do make parts. The only way they can make money is by
either patent royalties, or by winning lawsuits enforcing royalties.

Reading between the lines, I sense that you feel that nobody should
have to pay royalties in order to make parts. Am I wrong on this?

An IP company (e.g. Rambus) would be derelict _not_ to take maximum
advantage of patent legalities, since that's the only way it can make
money, and the company's officers are legally required to work in
their stockholders' interest, not in the larger interest of society.
Corporations are not charities.

As you probably know, I'm not a Rambus fan. But at least I understand
why they do what they do.

 

[Robert Myers]

Neither Rambus nor Mosaid make parts. They cannot swap patents with
companies that do make parts. The only way they can make money is by
either patent royalties, or by winning lawsuits enforcing royalties.

Reading between the lines, I sense that you feel that nobody should
have to pay royalties in order to make parts. Am I wrong on this?

An IP company (e.g. Rambus) would be derelict _not_ to take maximum
advantage of patent legalities, since that's the only way it can make
money, and the company's officers are legally required to work in
their stockholders' interest, not in the larger interest of society.
Corporations are not charities.

The discrepancy between theory and practice in patent law sometimes
seems large.

In theory, patent law should make it possible for investors and
innovators to reap the rewards of risk-taking and ingenuity.

Defensible intellectual property is essential to raising venture
capital. In that sense, patents do seem to work, at least sometimes.

At other times, the rewards seem to go to the sharpsters and the
lawyers. That's just life, I guess.

RM

 

[The little lost angel]

business model: that IP companies don't currently have to acquire any of
the hundreds/thousands of patents which their inventions depend on - IOW IP
is essentially a parasitic activity and most people cringe at the word
parasite.

While Rambus is being a scumbag about how they do it, I don't quite
agree that IP is a essentially a parasitic activity. People should
reap just rewards for their creativity. The problem here I see it is
instead of protecting people's right to be rewarded, the current
system simply work for corporations. Companies being companies must
produce profits, in some unethical cases, it involves playing the
system to obtain IP rights that shouldn't had been theirs.

There used to be a rule of patents such that you could not get a patent
which consisted of combining two existing inventions - one primary example
of this was that the guy who invented the pencil with the rubber tip eraser
on the end could not get a patent on his invention. This "rule" seems to
be largely ignored now - dunno if it was ever officially retracted.

It might never had existed? As far as I know, combining two inventions
is a creative & innovative step especially if it wasn't obvious to
everybody in that industry before you did it. Sure everybody might say
it's obvious we can add an eraser to the end of a pencil now that it's
invented, so why didn't everybody do it before?

My take is, if nobody did it before you filed the patent, then it
should be patentable. Not doing it does not mean not patenting though,
if everybody did it thus nobody bothered to patent it, obviously it
shouldn't be patentable. Which is basically the problem with Rambus,
everybody did it, but only they went and (unrightly) got the patent.

Apparently Geoff Tate worked for AMD for 10 years, on the x86 and 29000
processors, before he founded Rambus so one has to wonder how much his
"inventions" really might belong to AMD - usually employee agreements
specify quite clearly that any inventions made while in employment, and
related to the corporation's business, belong to the corporation. Did his
ideas come to him in a dream?... after he left AMD? Did AMD drop the ball
here?

Or they might be waiting for Geoff to get all the monies before sueing
him for it

p.s. I'm reading up on these stuff lately to see if I can get a patent
on push buttons like those hundred odd pieces on your keyboard, your
door bell, your remote, your ... pPp
--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Ar Q]

My take is, if nobody did it before you filed the patent, then it
should be patentable. Not doing it does not mean not patenting though,
if everybody did it thus nobody bothered to patent it, obviously it
shouldn't be patentable. Which is basically the problem with Rambus,
everybody did it, but only they went and (unrightly) got the patent.

This is what troubles me. I think all parties came to the same table and
established an industrial standard, but no one was in charge to register the
patents for the standard. So Rambus said, Ha, I will take it since no one
wants it.

 

[keith]

This is what troubles me. I think all parties came to the same table and
established an industrial standard, but no one was in charge to register the
patents for the standard. So Rambus said, Ha, I will take it since no one
wants it.

Who woulda thunk you could get a patent for a counter?

No, as has been said before in this thread, there are plenty patents on
DRAM and DDR. DRAM manufacturers trade patent portfolios so they can stay
in business. Rambus, Shambus, and Scambus don't have any reason to
"trade", so all they needed was a key patent. ...any patent. ...no mater
how lame.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

This is what troubles me. I think all parties came to the same table and
established an industrial standard, but no one was in charge to register the
patents for the standard. So Rambus said, Ha, I will take it since no one
wants it.

There was also the issue of Rambus's membership in an industrial
consortium called JEDEC which set all of the standards for everything
from EDO RAM to the current DDR2. One of the requirements of JEDEC
membership is that if you want to sit in on all of the secret meetings
of the standards body, you have to reveal all of your own patents, and
tell your co-members whether any of the work that the industry group is
working on infringe on any of your own patents and warn them about it.
Rambus never revealed whether any of the work JEDEC was working on had
any infringement potential on their patents. It's been generally
speculated that the reason Rambus kept quiet during JEDEC meetings was
because they did want to charge royalties on the standards that
eventually came out, so it could make income from it.

An even less flattering speculation was that Rambus kept quiet because
it really had no patents that infringed anything JEDEC was working on,
but it wanted to sit in on the meetings anyways, so that it could modify
its very general patents to include material that was being worked on
inside JEDEC secretly.

Yousuf Khan

 

[RusH]

Who owns patents of DRAM, EDO RAM, SDRAM, DDR RAM, DDR2 RAM?

Rambus they patenten everything and your dog


Pozdrawiam.

 

[George Macdonald]

While Rambus is being a scumbag about how they do it, I don't quite
agree that IP is a essentially a parasitic activity. People should
reap just rewards for their creativity. The problem here I see it is
instead of protecting people's right to be rewarded, the current
system simply work for corporations. Companies being companies must
produce profits, in some unethical cases, it involves playing the
system to obtain IP rights that shouldn't had been theirs.

If an inventor does not have access to the multiple patents required to
work in concert with, and prove that his device works, he has no basis for
anyone to believe his enhancement to the base device works. As an extreme
case, he/she then has the option of building their own fab or convincing a
foundry to do it and finding the funding to back all this up and one way or
another, is going to have to pay for the dependent IP. If I, as a mfr,
owned that dependent IP, I'd want to be "fairly compensated" [Rambus
favorite phrase] for the use of it... and not on a per device royalty
basis.

If, as in the case of Mosaid, some of the dependent IP is owned by a
different IP-only company then should Rambus have to pay, or trade with,
Mosaid for that IP? We then have the possibility of IP companies ganging
up on mfrs with a combined portfolio - legal?... I dunno but certainly
challengable. The model *is* flawed!

It's also more than "how they do it" - it's also a case of what they did...
and what the patent office allowed them to do.

In the case of Mosaid, they had worked for a number of years as a contract
company for design of circuits -- someone who posts occasionally in this
group works/worked for Mosaid. What the ownership of any resulting IP was
at the end of any design project I don't know but they must have been
fairly compensated for that design work; possibly they sold themselves
cheap to get a foot in the door. Now, in the past 18months or so, Mosaid
laid off a fair portion of their engineering staff and has decided to
follow Rambus in suing memory mfrs for patent infringement largely based on
that contract work.

It might never had existed? As far as I know, combining two inventions
is a creative & innovative step especially if it wasn't obvious to
everybody in that industry before you did it. Sure everybody might say
it's obvious we can add an eraser to the end of a pencil now that it's
invented, so why didn't everybody do it before?

Huh? Oh it *did* exist and is quoted as a classic example of
patentability. If it's an obvious "invention" how can you know that nobody
else has "invented" it and been using it independently for years.

My take is, if nobody did it before you filed the patent, then it
should be patentable. Not doing it does not mean not patenting though,
if everybody did it thus nobody bothered to patent it, obviously it
shouldn't be patentable. Which is basically the problem with Rambus,
everybody did it, but only they went and (unrightly) got the patent.

A patent has to be original and non-obvious.

Or they might be waiting for Geoff to get all the monies before sueing
him for it

I suggest you take a look at RMBS insider trading.

 

[The little lost angel]

Huh? Oh it *did* exist and is quoted as a classic example of
patentability. If it's an obvious "invention" how can you know that nobody
else has "invented" it and been using it independently for years.

You mean the pencil+eraser existed before the patent or ?

A patent has to be original and non-obvious.

Anything is obvious after it's done the first time no? I think the
best gauge of obvious would simply be whether at least a reasonable
number of persons have done the same thing for that particular purpose
in that particular industrial segment prior to the disclosure.


--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Keith R. Williams]

You mean the pencil+eraser existed before the patent or ?

The pencil existed and the eraser existed. The function of either
didn't change when they were combined into one unit, thus combining
them was deemed to be "obvious to one skilled in the art" and thus not
patentable.

Anything is obvious after it's done the first time no? I think the
best gauge of obvious would simply be whether at least a reasonable
number of persons have done the same thing for that particular purpose
in that particular industrial segment prior to the disclosure.

The phrase is "obvious to one skilled in the art". It is not
"obvious" if one sees it and then says "man that's so obvious, I wish
I'd thought of it". "Obvious" has a legal definition and isn't at all
straight-forward. ...which is only part of the problem.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

The phrase is "obvious to one skilled in the art". It is not
"obvious" if one sees it and then says "man that's so obvious,
I wish I'd thought of it". "Obvious" has a legal definition
and isn't at all straight-forward. ...which is only part of
the problem.

I think L'Angel has a good point, multiple independant
discovery (invention) is a valid indicator of "obvious
to one skilled in the art". The converse, however, isn't
necessarily true.

-- Robert

 

[Keith R. Williams]

I think L'Angel has a good point, multiple independant
discovery (invention) is a valid indicator of "obvious
to one skilled in the art". The converse, however, isn't
necessarily true.

That's where the problem comes in. Multiple invention doesn't
necessarily make something "obvious", at least under the law as it
stands. Prior art does show that an invention isn't novel (another
requirement) though. Rambus' "inventions" are easily shown to have
prior art. AFAIC, the real problem with Rambus' actions is in their
use of the "submarine patent".

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

That's where the problem comes in. Multiple invention
doesn't necessarily make something "obvious", at least
under the law as it stands.

Someone is suggesting that patent law is good as it stands?

Perhaps if two people invent the same thing, one might claim
co-incidence and the invention non-obvious. But if dozens
do, it's almost certainly obvious, not co-incidence.

-- Robert

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

AFAIC, the real problem with Rambus' actions is in their
use of the "submarine patent".

So? Rambus' actions in promoting their patented invention into
an industry standard without prior disclosure of interest and
intention to charge royalties gives grounds for equitable estoppel.
They might have the patent, but their actions amount to a waiver
of royalties.

-- Robert

 

[Keith R. Williams]

So? Rambus' actions in promoting their patented invention into
an industry standard without prior disclosure of interest and
intention to charge royalties gives grounds for equitable estoppel.
They might have the patent, but their actions amount to a waiver
of royalties.

Were my name Isaac Parker, yes. The problem here is that the others
were shown to be "unclean" as well, further muddying the waters.

 

[Keith R. Williams]

Someone is suggesting that patent law is good as it stands?

I don't think I quite said *that*. ;-)

I'm cautious about throwing out the baby with the bath water, and
having people who really don't understand the law decide which is
which. Because of what I do I'm a (very) little more than a layman
here and would rather not see the bonfires lit quite yet. ;-)

Perhaps if two people invent the same thing, one might claim
co-incidence and the invention non-obvious. But if dozens
do, it's almost certainly obvious, not co-incidence.

If only one gets to the patent office? Can you believe the other
eleven didn't pre-date their notebooks? If I can show that I shipped
invention 'X' before you patented it though... You're not likely to be
able to draw a black line on "obviousness", but "prior art" is rather
easy. That's why challenges rarely go to obviousness.

Then there's also the problem of timeliness. The patent offices can
only afford so much research and rely mostly on previous patent
applications for "prior art" searches. I don't think it reasonable to
ask anyone to search all written records for "prior art". I'd rather
have perhaps a "public discussion" period before a patent is granted.
One can then have their say, or forever hold their peace. "I hereby
pronounce..."

 

[George Macdonald]

You mean the pencil+eraser existed before the patent or ?

I thought you were suggesting that the "rule" had not existed.

Anything is obvious after it's done the first time no? I think the
best gauge of obvious would simply be whether at least a reasonable
number of persons have done the same thing for that particular purpose
in that particular industrial segment prior to the disclosure.

Keith's response(s) cover it I think. A serious problem here is that
the examiners who make decisions on patents don't actually "practice"...
leading to a situation where we have a "race" to the patent office by
people who are more expert in law than in science.