FTC Fires Back at Rambus

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a petition for a write of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, seeking to overturn a decision taken by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (CADC) in Rambus' favor. Last April of this year, the CADC determined that the FTC failed to demonstrate that Rambus harmed competition by launching legal action to all RAM manufacturers' or companies being involved in the field. Many analysts agree that Rambus is living on its patents whose claims are often too broad and overstated. This is linked to a previous story starting in March, when a Federal District Court jury found that Rambus did not engage in anticompetitive conduct and did not commit fraud, mislead or make misrepresentations to JEDEC. This was the result of Rambus strategy of manipulating and hiding data or information supposed to be transferred to the JEDEC, which is the consortium responsible to define and validate standard format for RAM. Rambus is used to file patents on technology or specifications, and while hiding such filing, proposed those formats to JEDEC to become a new standards. Once JEDEC accepts those specification as a new standard, the patent is then issued, and becomes public (18 months between filing and patent issuing), and then Rambus can sue any company willing to use such new format/specification, selling licenses. JEDEC was of course suing Rambus for this maneuver, and the FTC seems to have decided that current Rambus strategy is a true thread for the entire industry, despite the initial decision taken by the CACD. It is quite clear that the FTC would not launch such a heavy legal action if the organization did not have real serious concerns about Rambus business practice.