ITC Administrative Law Judge Rules in Favor of Rambus in Matter Reg: NVIDIA Products

[btarunr]

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced that the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for its U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) action against NVIDIA Corp. and other respondents issued an Initial Determination finding them in violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The ALJ determined that three of Rambus' five asserted patents are valid, enforceable, and infringed by the respondents. The ALJ also determined that there was no violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 for the remaining two asserted patents. The action is Investigation Number 337-TA-661.

Any of the parties may request the ITC's full Commission to review the ALJ's Initial Determination. If the Commission grants a petition for review, it may affirm, modify, reverse, set aside, or remand all or part of the ALJ's decision in developing the ITC's final determination.

"Following an extensive hearing process, we are pleased with the ALJ's determination that three of our patents are valid and infringed," said Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus. "We are obviously disappointed with the result for the other asserted patents and intend to request the Commission's review of the corresponding portions of the Initial Determination. We will continue to vigorously protect our patented inventions for the benefit of our shareholders and in fairness to our paying licensees."

History of the case: On November 6, 2008, Rambus filed a complaint with the ITC requesting an investigation pertaining to NVIDIA products. The complaint sought an exclusion order barring the importation, sale for importation, or sale after importation of products that infringe nine of Rambus' patents. The accused products are products that incorporate certain NVIDIA memory controllers, including graphics processors and media and communications processors. The complaint named NVIDIA as a proposed Respondent, as well as companies whose products incorporate the accused NVIDIA products and are imported into the United States. These respondents include: Asustek Computer Inc. and Asus Computer International, BFG Technologies, Biostar Microtech and Biostar Microtech International Corp., Diablotek Inc., EVGA Corp., G.B.T. Inc. and Giga-Byte Technology Co., Hewlett-Packard, MSI Computer Corp. and Micro-Star International Co., Palit Multimedia Inc. and Palit Microsystems Ltd., Pine Technology Holdings, Ltd., and Sparkle Computer Co. Four of the asserted patents were withdrawn from the investigation. An evidentiary hearing on the remaining asserted patents was held before the ALJ on October 13-20, 2009.

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[Vagike]

oooo burn!!!

 

[Fourstaff]

GT300 is going to cost a bit more than expected,

 

[PP Mguire]

We will continue to vigorously protect our patented inventions for the benefit of getting the most money we dont deserve because were greedy bastards.”

Fixed

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

bere losings nvidia deh pon of late, i'm almost sorry for them.

 

[btarunr]

Fixed

Unfix it. You'll know when someone stole your patented cookie recipe and made 10x your earnings.

 

[PP Mguire]

They are just whining cause Nvidia and friends (see what i did there ) are taking what they supposedly did and made it 5x better raking in the cash. Its the typical jealous company thing to do. Sorta like AMD and Intel and the anti-trust BS. Im all for AMD but geez its gettin old with the were gonna sue you cause you do things better than us attitude.

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

my thoughts wtf:

 

[jjFarking]

They are just whining cause Nvidia and friends (see what i did there ) are taking what they supposedly did and made it 5x better raking in the cash. Its the typical jealous company thing to do. Sorta like AMD and Intel and the anti-trust BS. Im all for AMD but geez its gettin old with the were gonna sue you cause you do things better than us attitude.

Whilst that's true, the point remains that something that nVidia & friends did not own made them mega $$$ and they 'forgot' to pay the actual inventor/owner the appropriate fee..

 

[TheLostSwede]

Except most of what Rambus owns patents of wasn't actually made by them, they just ponied up for a bunch of patents...
Rambus is more or less a patent troll...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

They are just whining cause Nvidia and friends (see what i did there ) are taking what they supposedly did and made it 5x better raking in the cash. Its the typical jealous company thing to do. Sorta like AMD and Intel and the anti-trust BS. Im all for AMD but geez its gettin old with the were gonna sue you cause you do things better than us attitude.

By law, you have to protect your patents or your patents fall to public domain. It is not necessarily an issue of jealously; it is a topic of necessity to keep your competitive edge.


The anti-trust lawsuit was mostly silly nonsense, I agree, but that involves trade practices, not patent infringement like this does.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

Except most of what Rambus owns patents of wasn't actually made by them, they just ponied up for a bunch of patents...
Rambus is more or less a patent troll...

Yeah, companies in the USA are notorious for paying off patent officials to use the courts to do extortion. Patent law in the USA is extremely corrupt. Every lawyer I know that I have spoken with about it agrees including my uncle. Every country has its corruption, and some are a good portion more corrupt than others like: China and Russia.

 

[qubit]

The patent troll wins again.

 

[WhiteLotus]

They'll get over it, just don't expect the prices of any video card to come down for the next month or two.

 

[Duffman]

yeah, Nvidia will buy their way out of it.

can we merge this thread with THIS one?

 

[KainXS]

its like painting a picture and someone stealing it and selling it for a 500 bucks when you were gonna sell it for 50.

they're just gonna pay out of it.

hopefully this dosen't lead to a delay for the GT300 series.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

its like painting a picture and someone stealing it and selling it for a 500 bucks when you were gonna sell it for 50.

they're just gonna pay out of it.

hopefully this dosen't lead to a delay for the GT300 series.

They probably didn't even know it would be considered a violation. Companies get patents in as vague of a topic as possible, and then sue when anything falls under the topic generally. Its extortionate policies governed by corruption. It happens all the time.

 

[sneekypeet]

The way I heard this story was that a group of guys got together and developed a product with intentions on working together in the long term.

They started throwing sand in each others panties and eventually broke apart.

In this time the "group" developed patents and no one ever filed.

After Samsung broke away they continued on what was rightfully theirs, as they had a hand in developing.

Now the fat lazy guy who caught all the sand in his panties was obviously chaffing and decided to cure his issue by filing for a patent, he himself didnt rightfully own, thus curing his chaffing by rubbing almost a billion US dollars on it (samsungs 5 year settlement).

Obviously the money from samsung must not have cured his itch, and is now (being backed by a settlement in court) seeing of other dollar bills may sooth his scratches.

 

[Bundy]

I must admit that I'm having a bit of trouble comprhending the patent system and how it functions. e.g. I search for the term "heat pipe patent" and get 430,000 hits. There are patents on top of patents. "memory controller patent" provides 1,7M hits.

Virtually everything we are using has been patented to death and I'm sure that not all of these "inventors" are paid for their efforts. It seems to me that patent action is more likely to be taken by well financed patent holding companies than individual inventors.

I agree with them being labelled patent trolls - not much different to ambulance chasers (tort lawyers).

 

[eidairaman1]

They are just whining cause Nvidia and friends (see what i did there ) are taking what they supposedly did and made it 5x better raking in the cash. Its the typical jealous company thing to do. Sorta like AMD and Intel and the anti-trust BS. Im all for AMD but geez its gettin old with the were gonna sue you cause you do things better than us attitude.

that case is done with, Intel Settled on it.

yeah, Nvidia will buy their way out of it.

can we merge this thread with THIS one?

that topic was already closed


And all this news for Nvidia, First the Faulty Mobility parts, then hearing about G92s failing, rebagging the GF9 Series, now the GF 300 Series being delayed. The Storm cloud is a storm wave for Nvidia now. Ever Since Intel with Rambus got their asses handed to them by AMD with DDR and then eventually Intel with DDR, Rambus has been sending out patent infringements left and right. Id like to see some DDR tech from them actually.

 

[Sasqui]

Virtually everything we are using has been patented to death and I'm sure that not all of these "inventors" are paid for their efforts. It seems to me that patent action is more likely to be taken by well financed patent holding companies than individual inventors.

I agree with them being labelled patent trolls - not much different to ambulance chasers (tort lawyers).

Too true.

How this ultimately pans out will be interesting. Remember RIM/Blackberry and NTP? $600 Million settlement.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

that case is done with, Intel Settled on it.






that topic was already closed


And all this news for Nvidia, First the Faulty Mobility parts, then hearing about G92s failing, rebagging the GF9 Series, now the GF 300 Series being delayed. The Storm cloud is a storm wave for Nvidia now. Ever Since Intel with Rambus got their asses handed to them by AMD with DDR and then eventually Intel with DDR, Rambus has been sending out patent infringements left and right. Id like to see some DDR tech from them actually.

At the time Duffman commented, it was not closed yet to my knowledge.

You tend to be anti-Nvidia with your posts, so no surprise with that comment really. Just look at earnings if you want to know how well companies are doing. Many more decisions effect a companies profitability than we all can track without being within the company. Negative press alone does not govern a company's success in the market.

(Abuse of patent law = legal extortion)

 

[Rexter]

Rambus Inc., one of the world’s premier technology licensing companies

why did that part make me laugh?

 

[qubit]

The way I heard this story was that a group of guys got together and developed a product with intentions on working together in the long term.

They started throwing sand in each others panties and eventually broke apart.

In this time the "group" developed patents and no one ever filed.

After Samsung broke away they continued on what was rightfully theirs, as they had a hand in developing.

Now the fat lazy guy who caught all the sand in his panties was obviously chaffing and decided to cure his issue by filing for a patent, he himself didnt rightfully own, thus curing his chaffing by rubbing almost a billion US dollars on it (samsungs 5 year settlement).

Obviously the money from samsung must not have cured his itch, and is now (being backed by a settlement in court) seeing of other dollar bills may sooth his scratches.

From what I remember when this whole f* fiasco started several years ago now, was that Rambass used submarine patents to try and extort money from the members of the JPEG working group, Samsung, Kingston etc. They either created the patents afterwards and somehow backdated them, or already had the patents and kept quiet about them until the SDR/DDR specs were finalised and then put a legal gun to their buddy's heads and said "Hey everybody, give us your money or else!". This was just another way of doing extortion and fraud.

The second scenario is the more likely one and is strictly against the working group's rules - which makes sense, as otherwise it's not a working group! Apparently, the idea is whatever tech one company develops, they share with the others and eventually a standard based on it, with suggestions and tech by everybody is thrashed out by committee (yes, committee ).

Also, there was evidence that Rambass disappeared a lot of incriminating paper documents and emails, which really weakened their case. Why this didn't nail them, I can only think is down to corruption ie payoffs to the courts/judges.

This case sounds weirdly similar to the continuing SCO fiasco: they are miraculously still around, despite never showing any proof of Linux infringement, in a very damaged state, but still there and able to fight another day - why wasn't the case thrown out when they didn't show the proof demanded by the court by the deadline way back in 2003/4 sometime? However, Rambass has been considerably more successful in its extortion campaign than SCO, but I wouldn't put it past SCO to somehow prevail as well.

 

[eidairaman1]

At the time Duffman commented, it was not closed yet to my knowledge.

You tend to be anti-Nvidia with your posts, so no surprise with that comment really. Just look at earnings if you want to know how well companies are doing. Many more decisions effect a companies profitability than we all can track without being within the company. Negative press alone does not govern a company's success in the market.

(Abuse of patent law = legal extortion)

If you hadn't noticed look at my motherboard, and I'm as Anti Nvidia as you are Anti AMD, so technically your statement is hypocritical. I'm just stating that Nvidia has a uphill battle on their hands now. They need to pull through to keep competition moving but when you start hearing so many people trying to downplay one company as being inferior and want one to be best all the time makes me sick, sometimes you have to hand the crown over and not be greedy ya know.