Rambus Wins Appeal of FTC Anti-Trust Ruling

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Rambus has won its appeal in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision said that it wasn't sufficient to prove that Rambus lied or harmed competitors; the FTC had to prove that it harmed consumers in order to fall under anti-trust law. This is, unfortunately, a very dangerous ruling in light of some of Microsoft's activities relating to OOXML because it raises the bar on the proof required to act against such behavior. However, the ruling in the Rambus case was merely vacated and remanded for further proceedings, not overturned. So, if the evidence warrants, the lower court might be able to decide that consumers were actually harmed by Rambus' conduct and rule against them. Alternatively, this ruling could be appealed to the Supreme Court by filing a petition for a writ of certiorari, but the Supreme Court only grants a few of those per year."

Hurting the Competition

[MozeeToby]

Hurting competition in and of itself hurts consumers. I thought that was the whole idea behind antitrust laws in the first place.

then people should go after the patents

[futureb]

if the technology was so widely recognized/easily adopted that it became industry standard during or just after the prosecution of the patents, isn't this a great argument that the patents themselves are invalid for obviousness?

that makes sense

[Speare]

I'm not 100% up on my late-1990s corporate dramas anymore, and maybe it's just a flippant or spurious kind of analogy to ponder, so set me straight where I've got this wrong:

Putting a file in a particular directory, so that other users might possibly request initiation of a download, is a criminal activity that can incur penalties of ~10000000% the cost of obtaining the original file legally. It doesn't matter if the file is actually downloaded. That's the "making available" charge.

But somehow, brazenly sharing ideas in memory technologies with all your competitors in the standards group, while maintaining a submarine patent, and then launching legal attacks on all those who built on the shared ideas, this is somehow okay because they hadn't proved that such a move had moved beyond the standards group and affected the marketplace? That's the "no harm to consumers" defense?

Re:You can get away with anything in GWB's America

[jd]

What happened to the idea that, if you indulged in dishonest and otherwise scumbag practices, you had 'unclean hands' and deserved to lose on that basis.

They found Herod's hand-washing dish. Besides, if you put two corporations in the same room and argue that the one with dirty hands looses, we'd need a new type of verdict of mutual guilt, where both sides get locked in the slammer for a few years. Hmmm. Actually, there might be something to be said for that...

You're Right

[JamesRose]

"This is, unfortunately, a very dangerous ruling in light of some of Microsoft's activities relating to OOXML because it raises the bar on the proof required to act against such behavior."

It'd be so much EASIER if we could just change the law so we can prosecute the people we don't like. How hipocritical ARE YOU!?