[leaddraft]

Rambus sues Nvidia over memory patents
Lawsuit alleges 17 violations

Rambus has filed a lawsuit accusing Nvidia of violating 17 of its memory patents.

The suit alleges that at least six of Nvidia's product lines infringe on Rambus patents, including chipsets, graphics processors and applications processors.

Rambus, which derives the bulk of its revenue from licensing patents for chip interfaces, filed the suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on 10 July.

The move is the latest in a long string of court actions filed by Rambus against companies outside the memory industry.

Rambus has requested an injunction to prevent Nvidia from selling products which it claims infringe its patents, as well as monetary damages.

"For more than six years we have diligently attempted to negotiate a licensing agreement with Nvidia, but our good faith efforts have been to no avail," said Tom Lavelle, senior vice president and general counsel at Rambus.

"We are left with no other recourse than litigation to protect and seek fair compensation for the use of our patented inventions."

Despite filing the suit, Lavelle said that Rambus would continue to attempt to negotiate a licensing deal with Nvidia.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/22...us-sues-nvidia

[Shiggity]

This comment pretty much sums up what I think about patent lawsuits and Rambus.

They hedged their bets by subverting JEDEC and tricking it into incorporating stuff that they were secretly awaiting patents on. That way if RAMBUS memory failed (as it did), they could then hit up all the other major memory players for patent infringement. It wouldn't have worked, except the other memory companies are also ******** who play dirty, and ticked off the judge in their case.

Eventually we're going to end up with a system so encumbered with patents and copyrights that nobody can develop anything new without paying outlandish royalty fees. Development will grind to a halt as a tiny fraction of the population will have essentially imposed a tax on modern living payable to themselves.

Then some upstart country will choose to ignore all that Intellectual Property and become the new technology leader of the world. That's what the U.S. did to the U.K. during the early industrial revolution. My bet right now is that's what China is going to do to the U.S. unless the U.S. wakes up and starts pounding some common sense into all these people worshiping the cult of IP. IP is supposed to benefit both the originators and society, not just the originators. When the originators are able to hold back society through their IP, it means IP law has shifted too far in their favor.

[Hardin]

Rambus does nothing but sue other companies maybe they should focus on making better products.

[Shiggity]

Originally Posted by Hardin

Rambus does nothing but sue other companies maybe they should focus on making better products.

Bingo

[stamasd]

Uhh, they haven't had any "product" in how may years now?

[Shiggity]

If Rambus's lawsuit actually wins, Nvidia is going to be screwed, a terrible company will get money they don't deserver, and everyone in the gaming community will suffer.

I'm praying they don't win.

[Badbonji]

Rambus probably make more money sueing them than selling any products...

[stamasd]

Read above - Rambus doesn't have any product to sell - never did. What they make money of is licensing their patents to others, and suing those who won't buy licenses.