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UPDATE: US Appeals Court Throws Out FTC Ruling Against Rambus
A federal court of appeals on Tuesday threw out a 2007 Federal Trade Commission ruling against Rambus Inc. (RMBS), arguing the agency failed to prove “its allegation of monopolization,” and ordered a new trial.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously vacated the agency’s decision and said a new trial would have to address “serious concerns about the sufficiency of the evidence” in the case.
Archive for April, 2008
Links 04/23/2008
April 23, 2008
Links 04/22/2008
April 22, 2008-
ANSI Submits Analysis of IPR Policies on Trade with China – Annotated
- The ANSI report, “Intellectual Property Rights Policies in Standards Development Organizations and the Impact on Trade Issues with the People’s Republic of China,” was submitted on June 11 to U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, U.S. State Department Secretary Colin L. Powell and U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick. The three U.S. officials co-signed a March 2004 letter to China’s Vice Premier Zeng that focused on a proposed Chinese policy requiring adherence to a national standard for WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI). China’s proposed wireless communications policy would have mandated a specific encryption standard that may have locked many U.S. manufacturers out of the expansive Chinese market. – post by davidr1
Links 04/18/2008
April 18, 2008-
Legal dispute could increase cost of digital TV – SiliconValley.com
At the core of the AAI’s complaint is that Rembrandt reneged on a commitment AT&T made when it owned the patent. AT&T was a member of an industry group that agreed on a digital television standard in 1995. The FCC then mandated that standard for all digital broadcasters the following year, meaning that the networks can’t use other technologies.
AT&T pledged to license its patent to anyone who asked at a “reasonable and nondiscriminatory rate.” Rembrandt has said in court filings that it isn’t bound by that commitment.
By getting the patent after it became part of a technology standard and then demanding exorbitant fees, Rembrandt is illegally abusing its monopoly, the AAI said.
The FTC recently cracked down on similar practices, what lawyers call “patent ambushes.” In January, it blocked Negotiated Data Solutions LLC, based in Chicago, from seeking higher royalties on patents related to the ethernet computer networking technology.
Links 04/15/2008
April 15, 2008-
Google mapping spec now an industry standard | Tech news blog – CNET News.com
Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google’s KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.
KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth, the company’s software for flying over the surface of a virtual globe. With its 3D coordinate-based system, people can create models of city buildings, draw a line showing where they hiked, or overlay their own custom place names on a generic map.
Links 04/10/2008
April 10, 2008-
EETimes.com – Rambus wins memory chip patent case
Memory chip technology developer Rambus Inc has won a key case in a long-running patent lawsuit, sending its shares 39 percent higher.
The jury rejected claims by three large memory-chip makers, Hynix Semiconductor Inc, Micron Technology Inc and Nanya Technology, that Rambus deliberately misled the memory chip industry in the 1990s when new standards were being hammered out.
Links 04/09/2008
April 9, 2008tags: standards
DESCA* is a comprehensive, modular consortium agreement for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Initiated by key FP7 stakeholder groups, and co-developed with the FP community, it offers a reliable frame of reference which seeks to balance the interests of all of the main participant categories in FP research projects: large and small firms, universities, public research institutes and RTOs. You will find here a PowerPoint Presentation with the basic facts about DESCA.
Links 04/05/2008
April 5, 2008Who needs Kaleidescape? – Media Wonk – Blog on ContentAgenda.com – 1500000150
tags: standards
The DVD-CCA is set to convene again in Los Angeles next week, where attendees presumably will learn whether the studios are still serious about including an anti-Kaleidescape amendment as part of the plan to introduce so-called managed copy for DVDs. For those joining us late, Kaleidescape makes high-end home media servers that let you transfer the contents of DVDs to a hard drive and then stream them over a home network. Although the Kaleidescape system does not circumvent the CSS encryption used on DVDs to prevent copying, and in fact is a CSS licensee, DVD-CCA sued anyway, claiming the CSS license does not permit the creation of permanent copies.
In the face of this clear statement, groups opposed to ratification of Open XML want to continue their harangue and tear down anyone who doesn’t agree with them. In doing so, they are insulting the thousands of people and entities that worked through this process with care and integrity. They are also fighting against the idea of choice among document formats and international control over this widely used document format.
Links 04/04/2008
April 4, 2008An antitrust think tank asked the Federal Trade Commission to step in to the patent fight between Rembrandt IP Management and the TV industry over a key element in the digital-TV transition.
Rembrandt IP Management
In a petition to the commission, the American Antitrust Institute asked it to investigate
Rembrandt — which holds the patent on a key element in the DTV-transmission standard — for “anticompetitive conduct that threatens the digital-television conversion.”
Critics Speak Out On ISO’s OOXML Ruling – Software – IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
tags: standards
While Microsoft may have won the battle to make OOXML a recognized standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), opponents are not going quietly into the night.
Bob Sutor, IBM’s executive vice president of standards, wrote in a blog post that now that the process of international standards making has been “laid bare for all to examine,” some may not like what they’re finding.
The American Antitrust Institute is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to initiate an investigation of anticompetitive conduct by Rembrandt, Inc. that will increase the costs of the conversion to digital television for millions of consumers. In a petition filed before the FTC today, the AAI alleged that Rembrandt violated policies of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), a private standard setting body, that intellectual property involved in the digital television standard must be licensed on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis.
Standards 04/03/2008
April 3, 2008tags: standards
The International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) approval of Microsoft’s OOXML as an international standard is just the beginning of what could be a lengthy process before the file format can be widely and successfully implemented for exchanging documents, according to critics and supporters of OOXML.
