Feuerwizard
April 26th, 2004, 09:52 am
DESPITE A HIGH profile court case which lasted weeks, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) immediately filed an appeal against the decision of a judge, and asked for a review of the entire case.
Its grounds for a review are contained in a 125 page filing on the FTC web site, dated the 16th of April 2004, which argues that Rambus engaged in a deliberate plan to conceal the filing of patents from the JEDEC memory standards committee and that the judge overlooked several pieces of testimonies justifying the FTC antitrust allegations.
Rambus only demanded SDRAM DDR royalties from the largest memory makers in the world after "Plan A", the endorsement of its RDRAM memory IP began to unravel after Intel withdrew its support.
The FTC document alleges that Plan B involved deliberate deceit on the part of Rambus, which involved attending JEDEC meetings and secretly filing patent applications based on discussions about DDR standards at those meetings.
It alleges that Rambus only walked away from meetings at JEDEC when it was advised that it would be unable to collect royalties while it was participating in industry standards meetings.
According to the filing, soon after leaving JEDEC, Rambus realised that it was likely it would be involved in litigation, and in the summer of 1998 it shredded over 20,000 pounds of documents - called in the filing "Shred Day".
Richard Crisp, who was Rambus' representative at the JEDEC meetings, threw out all of the paper in his office.
As late as 1999, the document claims, Intel was still unaware of some problems with Rambus designs and that led it to the decision that the "market should decide" which memory standard was adopted. This is despite the fact that Intel engineers were unable to make the 820 "Caminogate" RDRAM design work.
It was only after the decision by Intel was made that Rambus instituted "Plan B", it is alleged, a plan to charge royalties on SDRAM DDR designs.
The appeal is being made by the FTC because, it alleges Rambus could collect as much as $3 billion in royalties by 2005, with the possibility remaining that it could have 100% market share by collecting these SDRAM DR royalties. The filing said: "Over time these costs are likely to be passed on to consumers".
The possibility also remains that Rambus could attempt to charge chipset makers and makers of controllers royalties too.
You can read the document here (http://www.ftc.gov/os/adjpro/d9302/040422appealbrief.pdf)
Its grounds for a review are contained in a 125 page filing on the FTC web site, dated the 16th of April 2004, which argues that Rambus engaged in a deliberate plan to conceal the filing of patents from the JEDEC memory standards committee and that the judge overlooked several pieces of testimonies justifying the FTC antitrust allegations.
Rambus only demanded SDRAM DDR royalties from the largest memory makers in the world after "Plan A", the endorsement of its RDRAM memory IP began to unravel after Intel withdrew its support.
The FTC document alleges that Plan B involved deliberate deceit on the part of Rambus, which involved attending JEDEC meetings and secretly filing patent applications based on discussions about DDR standards at those meetings.
It alleges that Rambus only walked away from meetings at JEDEC when it was advised that it would be unable to collect royalties while it was participating in industry standards meetings.
According to the filing, soon after leaving JEDEC, Rambus realised that it was likely it would be involved in litigation, and in the summer of 1998 it shredded over 20,000 pounds of documents - called in the filing "Shred Day".
Richard Crisp, who was Rambus' representative at the JEDEC meetings, threw out all of the paper in his office.
As late as 1999, the document claims, Intel was still unaware of some problems with Rambus designs and that led it to the decision that the "market should decide" which memory standard was adopted. This is despite the fact that Intel engineers were unable to make the 820 "Caminogate" RDRAM design work.
It was only after the decision by Intel was made that Rambus instituted "Plan B", it is alleged, a plan to charge royalties on SDRAM DDR designs.
The appeal is being made by the FTC because, it alleges Rambus could collect as much as $3 billion in royalties by 2005, with the possibility remaining that it could have 100% market share by collecting these SDRAM DR royalties. The filing said: "Over time these costs are likely to be passed on to consumers".
The possibility also remains that Rambus could attempt to charge chipset makers and makers of controllers royalties too.
You can read the document here (http://www.ftc.gov/os/adjpro/d9302/040422appealbrief.pdf)