back to article FTC drops Rambus 'patent ambush' claims

US regulators have finally thrown in the towel after seven years of battling memory chip designer Rambus in court. The Federal Trade Commission today said it's officially dropped claims Rambus violated antitrust laws by hoodwinking the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) industry standards group into approving …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rambus gets away with another scam

    The Microsucks legal strategy of divide and conquer wins again. Generate mountains of legal paperwork, obfuscate and circumvent and you too can escape justice in America. It just takes years...

  2. Chris C

    Less-competitive market?

    "The FTC's biggest hurtle in the case was showing adequate evidence that Rambus' high royalty rates have resulted in a less competitive market."

    Can somebody explain why this needed to be explained at all? Rambus intentionally defrauded JEDEC during the drafting of the DDR standard by not informing them of Rambus' patent applications for technologies used in DDR memory. Subsequently, JEDEC formalized the DDR standard. As a result, all PC manufacturers adopted the DDR standard. The end result is that Rambus gets a royalty on literally every PC sold. When a company gets a royalty on 100% of the market, how can anybody NOT see that it eliminated competition? When you're competitor is forced to pay you a royalty, then they're not really a competitor.

    Personally, I think JEDEC should have sued Rambus for fraud for intentionally not revealing their patent applications when drafting the DDR standard. But then, since Rambus is a US corporation, we all know how that would have ended. We need only to look at Research In Motion to remind us of that.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    s/t/d/

    I don't think you mean hurtle.

  4. Dazed and Confused
    Black Helicopters

    So much for the new administration being tougher on anti trust

    If pushing through a standard without telling the standards body you've patented it already isn't a breach of trust then what the hell is.

    And everyone was expecting the new US administration to be tougher on anti trust, where as the generally feel was that Bush approved of people abusing their positions of power. Here we have a case where the Bush Administration were persuing a felon and the new guys have just handed them a get out of jail free.

  5. Lars Silver badge
    Happy

    @Dazed and Confused

    Perhaps the old administration is just cleaning up the table, collecting the money, before it is too late.

    See what an optimist I am.

    Remainds me of a Russian (about 70 old) upper class communist, who once told me The Soviet Union and the USA are very much alike.

    I did my best to prevent laughing.

    Later I had to ask him what he actually ment.

    He then told me that the two countries are equally corrupt, have the same number of nuclear weapons and adore millionaires .

  6. Daniel B.
    Unhappy

    @Chris C

    It seems like the FTC just got tired of this case, which looks like a bad decision. But oh well... I do hope JEDEC doesn't bring in Rambus for the next RAM spec.

    As for RIM ... that case was a different thing; NTP is clearly a patent troll, and if anything, they're losing their stupid patents anyway. Rambus can't really get its patents reversed, because they actually did the thing, it isn't a "chip that stores bytes" kind of patent. Ugh.

  7. raving angry loony

    old school pirates

    The FTC is a completely incompetent, useless organization that is incapable of successfully doing anything to protect the consumer. They should just disband it and stop pretending that the US is anything more than a haven for old school pirates and plunderers, or that their population is nothing more than prey for these sharks.

    Let the E.U. deal with them. They seem to have a much more solid idea of what it takes to stop these type of scum.

  8. James O'Brien
    Thumb Up

    @Lars

    "He then told me that the two countries are equally corrupt, have the same number of nuclear weapons and adore millionaires ."

    Now that old Soviet is someone to listen to. Straight shooter and honest :)

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