Judge rules against Nvidia in ITC action by Rambus

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the US international trade commission has found Nvidia guilty of infringing three patents held by Rambus.

The products affected include certain Nvidia memory controllers such as those found in graphics cards:

http://www.techpowerup.com/113564/IT..._Products.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

WTF?? I hope this does not affect the consumer graphics card market!!

[kalniel]

It seems the US international trade commission has found Nvidia guilty of infringing three patents held by Rambus.

The products affected include certain Nvidia memory controllers such as those found in graphics cards:

http://www.techpowerup.com/113564/IT..._Products.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

WTF?? I hope this does not affect the consumer graphics card market!!

Shouldn't affect it - nVidia can afford to pay any reasonable fine and enforced licensing fees.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Companies also named as respondents in the case are:

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.

[scaryjim]

This is hardly a surprise given Samsung pays $900 million to settle with Rambus. Rambus seem to have hit a lot of companies recently for both patent infringements and anti-competitive practices (it has alledged that prices of DDR RAM were artificially lowered during the early - mid 2000s deny its competing technologies a level playing field - of course, early P4s used RDIMMs rather than DDR...). If Rambus legally owns the patents and NVidia have actually infringed them, then there's not a lot to say (unless we want this to descend into a bitter diatribe about how appalling the USAs patent laws are, of course... )

[shadowmaster]

I need to get a job with Rambus All they do is sue people

[ajones]

I need to get a job with Rambus All they do is sue people

Isn't Rambus a bunch of MIT professors who just develop and license IP; litigating against those companies who use it without their permission... Of course they generally wait a while until the offending company has significantly used their technology first.

[Lee H]

If Rambus legally owns the patents and NVidia have actually infringed them, then there's not a lot to sayunless we want this to descend into a bitter diatribe about how appalling the USAs patent laws are, of course... )

This is the same patent office that has allowed 20% of the human genome to be registered as a patent

[shaithis]

This is the same patent office that has allowed 20% of the human genome to be registered as a patent

I hope that has been registered to either "God" or "Mother Nature"

[Pob255]

Wow they finally got some to stick on nvidia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus

Rambus are a bunch of who sat in on the original JEDEC while drawing up patents on the ram they were turning into the standard.
Then left JEDEC when they wouldn't agree to licence technology under "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms.
Then when the standard was finalised, they unvailed their patents and started sueing everyone.
They've not developed any thing since, to my knowledge, they just sue everyone and clame license fees on the underlieing technology that is now such a part of the system that it would be impossible to remove without totally redesigning pc's.