Rambus Wins Submarine Patent Case

Bloomberg

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away the Federal Trade Commission’s bid to impose antitrust penalties that would have limited the royalties collected by memory-chip technology company Rambus Inc.

The justices, without comment, left intact a federal appeals court decision favoring Rambus, which gets more than 80 percent of its revenue from royalties. The lower court threw out FTC findings that Rambus undermined competition in the $20 billion market for dynamic random-access memory chips by scheming to get secretly patented technology included in industrywide standards.

While I dislike submarine patents as much as anyone else, imo JEDEC should’ve had rules to protect its standards against it. They didn’t so they got suckered by Rambus – sure consumers end up paying the bill but it’s money that could’ve gone to all JEDEC members instead of just Rambus.

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