Rambus has to be smiling over this major win. From C|Net:
Some memory makers have claimed that Rambus obtained its patents through fraud. That argument, so far, has not been greatly successful in court. Infineon emerged victorious in a case against Rambus at the trial level, but the decision was largely reversed on appeal. Infineon eventually settled by paying Rambus about $46 million over a two-year period.
Now, Hynix is appealing the verdict, which could have them paying intrest on the $306.5 million. Sucks to be them.
However, considering the royalties would add very, very little to the end-user cost (we’re talking an extra $1 per GB) and the fact that JEDEC (which included Samsung, Hynix, and a few others) not only stole Rambus patented idea as an ‘open’ standard, they managed to get headway when Rambus was portrayed as the bad guys. Rambus got severely shafted, especially considering how much more they really could’ve had in royalties. They only were going to charge a few percent (I think it was maybe 1-2%) royalty, but Hynix and the other greedy JEDEC members decided to grab Rambus technologies. I’m sure you understand how DDR works, with data being transferred on the rising and falling edges of the clock. Rambus invented that logic, brought it to JEDEC, and was laughed out of it. Much of what DDR and SDR SDRAM came because of Rambus.
I know I’ve been hard on Rambus in the past, but I didn’t have the full story—which was that the little guy (Rambus) got screwed.
Ahh I see, well then it may suck to have to pay that money but if Rambus came up with it and then it got stolen by the big guy then the bug guy should pay.
