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Nvidia faces possible ban on imports after USITC ruling in Rambus patent suit

On January 25, 2010, 4:29 PM

Things aren't looking so hot for Nvidia. The US International Trade Commission found the company guilty of infringing on three Rambus patents. The decision may lead to a ban on the import of some Nvidia products -- unless it divvies up, of course.

In July 2008, Rambus filed suit against Nvidia, claiming the company violated some 17 patents. Infringing products included those with memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM. Nvidia's general counsel, David Shannon, said the company would continue to contest the commission's initial decision, but if the ITC upholds the ruling, Nvidia may have to license the technology patents in question from Rambus.

That won't come cheap, though. For instance, when Samsung settled with Rambus and licensed its technology for five years, it agreed to pay $200 million upfront, a quarterly sum of roughly $25 million, and to buy $200 million in Rambus stock. Naturally, Rambus is "interested in having productive settlement discussions with Nvidia," but the GPU-maker hasn't caved yet.

In a statement, Rambus said it would continue to "vigorously protect" its patented inventions for the benefit of shareholders and in fairness to paying licensees. MSI, BFG, Biostar, Diablotek, EVGA, Gigabyte, Palit, Sparkles and others were also named in the all-but-defunct memory company's suit.

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January 25, 2010 9:47 PM

dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

An email exchange in 1995 between MIke Farmwald (Rambus co-patent holder) and Rambus employee Richard Crisp reveals that there were some in the industry who thought that Rambus' DRAM solution relied on earlier work done by an organization called SCI. Farmwald dismissed this position as "completely ridiculous' and wrote that he had 'had the idea for Rambus while still working at MIPS in very early 1988, possibly even 1987", which was before he started receiving SCI meeting notes in 1989.

However, Farmwald, during at least some portion of his time as an employee of MIPS, was subject to a non-disclosure and invention agreement, which provided that, under certain conditions, Farmwald's idea for Rambus would have been owned by MIPS

[link]

You "Guest"s seem to be confusing my personal disgust at your company's business ethos with some misguided analogy that I deem Samsung et al with somehow not being deserving of punishment under the law.

Until patent reform renders parasites like Rambus null and void, the law stands and I have no quarrel with the court findings.

Howevah ! This does not mitigate the fact that Rambus is a company that is totally devoid of moral fibre.

You can quote legelese until your meagre pension plan kicks in. The fact remains that the (correct) public image of Rambus is of a tapeworm in the body of the tech community.

You produce little, and aside from litigation the future holds less.

Rambus sits proudly at the forefront of one-dimensional propaganda and patent ambush.

Why is it that Rambus employees cannot find at least one source of support outside of a legal judgement ?

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January 25, 2010 11:32 PM

Archean, TechSpot Paladin, said:

Unethical...

Despicable....

Business practice.

Is anyone at RAMBust working on future tech development ? or is all the office space taken up by litigators and heavy-handed propagandists?

I assume you do have a head office...and it is above ground.

Very well put lol

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January 26, 2010 1:03 AM

Staff

Matthew, TechSpot Staff, said:

It doesn't sound like those 200+ engineers have been very busy.

WHAT!!! lol

Patents:

• 867 Issued

• 607 Applications

(as of 12/31/09)

And how many of those were issued in the last year? A basic search on the USPTO's database shows 77. How many of them are substantial technologies or products? I'm guessing not many -- if any. Rambus has no meaningful product-related press releases on its site in recent times, and its own patent page hasn't been updated since 2008.

This doesn't mean very much considering the size differences between operations and actual nature of the patents, but by comparison, let's look at the patent activity of some other tech companies in the same period:

Intel: 1535 patents.

Nvidia: 272 patents.

Sandisk: 334 patents.

Samsung: 5101 patents.

Micron: 973 patents.

I stand by my statement: It doesn't sound like those 200+ engineers have been very busy. And yes, in my opinion Rambus is all-but-defunct. It's living on through patent trolling and resulting licensing royalties. Spare me and the TechSpot community of another two dozen paragraphs of legalese and irrelevant, decade-old court logs.

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January 26, 2010 2:49 AM

Staff

Julio Franco, TechSpot Editor, said:

Putting this topic to rest. There was a lot of argumentation from both sides which is always positive, however considering the number of replies made by guest user(s) and some indecorous emails we received, this is starting to look more like a trolling attempt than anything else.

We can't say for sure either, but ideally company delegates and employees should identify themselves as such, so the rest of readers can know where they are coming from.

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May 15, 2011 1:45 AM

dividebyzero, trainee n00b, said:

Guest (Rambus PR flak) said:

Hynix..help help help!!!

Well, at least we know settlement talks will start off above 500 million...lol

Or throws out Rambus' judgement

[link]

Long time coming, and hopefully, the start of a trend.

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