Rambus Sues NVIDIA for Patent Infringement

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RAMBUS has filed a lawsuit against NVIDIA in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The company is alleging that NVIDIA is violating 17 Rambus-held patents on memory controllers and is seeking monetary damages and an injunction.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based company says that chipsets, graphics processers, and media communication processors across six different Nvidia product lines are illegally infringing. The patents held concern memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM. Rambus is asking the court for an injunction (which would stop Nvidia from selling the products at issue), as well as monetary damages.
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Add Rambus to the list of companies that patent troll.

Come on, when was the last time anyone used their overpriced memory?
 
Steve said:
RAMBUS has filed a lawsuit against NVIDIA in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The company is alleging that NVIDIA is violating 17 Rambus-held patents on memory controllers and is seeking monetary damages and an injunction.
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Wow. Will it never end with them. Nobody wants their memory, they donated techs to jedec and whether they like it or not by hiding the fact that they owned the patents on these techs those are now part of the DDR spec. You know if they stopped their lawsuits in 10 years people might start using their designs if memory if its any good at that point. They could have ruled the world with Intel if they only worried about lowering the cost on Rambus instead of suing anyone who was making DDR and not Rambus memory.
 
SDR? Seriously? :confused:

Looks to me like rambus has some timeframe issues to be addressed. Nvidia has been manufacturing their own memory controllers on motherboards since the Nforce came out... Not to mention the contollers that have been on their graphics cards for ages. I'm no lawyer but I don't understand how these actions are allowed to persist when it seems that laws for things like industrial espionage etc should cover any illicit activities in this area.
 
I didn't even know rambus still existed. It was nice of them to wait like 7 years to decide that they have been infringing on their patents since SDR memory was being used. If rambus came forward right away Nvidia would have altered their memory controller long ago. By waiting now they can sue for 10 times more money. I guess that is their business model.
 
I was wonder whether the lawyers fell asleep as I haven't heard any suits from them for a while.
 
Are these clowns still around? :rolleyes:

I'll never forgive them for my Pentium 3. That RAM cost as much as the rest of the system, and didn't carry over to new generations like it was supposed to. :mad:
 
By waiting now they can sue for 10 times more money
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According to an article they pestered Nvidia for 6 years (i think) to license the tech, but Nvidia kept refusing, so at least in Rambus's case they did try to settle it.

Of course Nvidia could have been refusing as they believe the patent was non infringing, or use in previous examples before Rambus patented it, therefore making it void.
 
you guys need to keep up, it was not too long ago that finally after years of courtroom dancing and appeals that Rambus was found to have not violated the law with respect to their patents and deceiving the JEDEC commitee.
http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=61000

Didnt take the clever bastards long to get back in the saddle.
 
The_Engineer said:
Nvidia has been manufacturing their own memory controllers on motherboards since the Nforce came out... Not to mention the contollers that have been on their graphics cards for ages.
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With patent rights, it doesn't matter if you design it yourself or not. If your design infringes the patented invention, even if you created it without knowledge of the patent, you're still subject to monetary damages and an injunction. RAMBUS is unlikely to get an injunction however, since (as mentioned) they don't produce any products themselves.

The_Engineer said:
I'm no lawyer but I don't understand how these actions are allowed to persist when it seems that laws for things like industrial espionage etc should cover any illicit activities in this area.
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IAAL - you don't need to steal to infringe a patent, so things like industrial espionage don't come into play.

The basis for a patent is that the inventor turns over the information on how to practice the invention in the form of a patent application. If approved, this issues into a patent and is freely available to the public. In exchange for disclosing the patented invention, the inventor is given a right to exclude others from practicing the patented invention for a limited period of time (20 years from filing of the application). Persons other than the assignee (inventor or his employer) can't use the invention no matter how they came across it or developed it.

This is bad news for Nvidia because RAMBUS has fought more than a few battles with these patents, such that they are unlikely to find any invalidating prior art. In terms of the JEDEC issue, that battle was fought by the FTC and lost when an appeals court overruled the FTC's decision in April of this year.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080422/144051920.shtml

I'd imagine that Nvidia will settle this quickly.
 
Ockie said:
Another blow for nvidia.
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I wouldn't put much stock in the Rambus lawsuit being a blow for NVIDIA. Probably the only reason Rambus is doing it right now is because of NVIDIAs current situation which might make them more prone to settle.
 
And just when I thought nVidia could slap on some expensive XDR2 onto their equally expensive GTX 280 cards. :( I could keep dreaming. $1000 graphics card *YAY!*:cool:.
 
Firstly, thanks for the info. I had a relatively vague idea of the situation but your explanation was clear and concise, very helpful. In this day and age where patent trolls do exist and many people are fighting for patent reform it is frustrating to see a company that we trust be in a position such as this. If they are truly in the wrong then it really brings down our picture of them and is hard to accept. If Rambus is just being the bloodsucking leech we expect them to be then it is just as frustrating that they are empowered to do so by our current laws and judicial system.
PurduEE said:
[...] I'd imagine that Nvidia will settle this quickly.
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Interesting Analysis.
 
I find it very convenient that rambus chooses NOW to attack nvidia. Talk about kicking someone when they are down.

It wouldn't make me cry if everyone that works for rambus (especially the lawyers) just died instantly. I own a computer repair store, and I STILL see customers with shitty rambus ram in them... and they want to upgrade their ram. yeah right. lol
 
Yet another example in the looong line of them that the patent laws need to be reformed; whats with this BS of sitting on something until either enough people infringe or the company that infringe have enough money/bad press so they would be more likely to pay to keep it out of thepublic eye...

I would typically say this crap is getting old... but it's well beyond getting....
 
I have no love for Ramittoous but someone somewhere on JEDEC screwed up bad. I think of it this way:

I am getting ready to release a spec than will affect the entire industry and most likely be adopted by every manufacturer out there. It seems that checking what proprietary information and patents would be included in my spec, who owns them, what licensing is available etc. might be prudent. It seems Ramittous deceived JEDEC but was within the law, JEDEC just didn't check the facts hard enough. This makes Ramitous devious conniving bastards but the fact is JEDEC fell way short of doing their homework.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but Ramittous didn't sit on them, once the spec was released it was not long until they started suing/pressuring for license fees/royalties which lead to the FTC looking into it, causing the other suits to go on hold, and now that the FTC has lost, Ramittous is at warp litigation factor 9.
 
Sadly, whether you like it or not, if you buy DDR, DDR2, or DDR3 ram, you are paying Rambus whether you know it or not (there's no way around it). The were originally found guilty in trial court for sneaking their tech into the JEDEC (and patenting a few other things that were discussed after they left the JEDEC), but it was overturned by the appeals court. So yes, they do own the rights to the memory and every current memory maker pays a "Rambus tax" and so do you. I get sick of seeing their devious and litigeous behavior rewarded in court time and time againg, but they have good lawyers and technicalities (and the law) on their side (right or wrong). Rambus and their lawyers, like cockroaches, will be one of the few things left on this planet to survive a nuclear holicost, and I'm sure they'll sue someone for that too... for a little history on the subject see here: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080423082101546
 
Deviationer said:
hey RAMUS, no one cares about you and your products. Just die already.
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What did ramus do to you? :(

On a more serious note, too bad Skulltrail was tied to this POS RAM. It would have been truly killer if it utilized a more forward tech like DDR3.
 
boss99 said:
What did ramus do to you? :(

On a more serious note, too bad Skulltrail was tied to this POS RAM. It would have been truly killer if it utilized a more forward tech like DDR3.
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Skulltrail uses FB-DIMM DDR which is an excellent memory.:confused:
 
Fukin' Rambus! Christ all mighty I thought those weaselly shyt sticks were long dead. They still breath!:mad:
 
boss99 said:
What did ramus do to you? :(

On a more serious note, too bad Skulltrail was tied to this POS RAM. It would have been truly killer if it utilized a more forward tech like DDR3.
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Yeah, I said as much already. It would have been nice if Intel had used DDR3 RAM on the D5400XS but unfortunately that would have required them to design a new chipset to support SMP and DDR3 memory. There wasn't enough opportunity for revenue for them to recoup such costs.

That having been said, the FB-DIMM requirement isn't really all that bad. FB-DIMMs have come way down and unless you need modules larger than 4GB its' reasonably priced right now.
 
Dan_D said:
Yeah, I said as much already. It would have been nice if Intel had used DDR3 RAM on the D5400XS but unfortunately that would have required them to design a new chipset to support SMP and DDR3 memory. There wasn't enough opportunity for revenue for them to recoup such costs.

That having been said, the FB-DIMM requirement isn't really all that bad. FB-DIMMs have come way down and unless you need modules larger than 4GB its' reasonably priced right now.
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I can tell you one thing Asus and Rambus both did to me. They sold me and four or five others that POS P4t533 and 232 pin rd ram. Not that I hold a grudge or anything.
 
PurduEE said:
With patent rights, it doesn't matter if you design it yourself or not. If your design infringes the patented invention, even if you created it without knowledge of the patent, you're still subject to monetary damages and an injunction. RAMBUS is unlikely to get an injunction however, since (as mentioned) they don't produce any products themselves.
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QFT.

Rambus is patent troll. I can't believe that ruling was overturned.

I thought it was obvious that Rambus had done things wrong by participating and contributing to JEDEC (which is supposed to be an OPEN standards committee) and pushing their ideas which they KNOWINGLY were patenting and/or patented already.
 
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