Trial notes 3/23/06 (1)
Whyte started out by providing jury instructions that the testimony yesterday can enlighten them for reasonable royalty rates but not valid for infringement.
Nissly did the cross on Chung
Chung gave some background. Of interest is Chung got a college degree in English literature in Korean. No technical background, yet managed to work himself up to VP of Hynix. He has conducted about 100 license agreements for Hynix. Usually they take 2 – 4 years, some cases 7 years. [Nissly is comparing that to Rambus where they wanted Hynix to sign within a span of several months.]
Nissly then goes through other events occurring in 2000: Hitachi lawsuit filed by Rambus in Delaware and Mannheim Germany, International Trade Commission suit filed against Hitachi, Rambus letter of DRAM infringement to Nvidia, Rambus sues Infineon in Aug 11, 2000.
Then things got interesting when Nissly asked Chung if he recalled a June 22, 2000 Rambus Press Release stating Hitachi had settled with Rambus. Stone objected, and Whyte got involved questioning Chung if he read this release at that time. Chung states he thought he did as that’s his job. Whyte then replied something to the effect 'thought he did' wasn't good enough. I believe Nissly then dropped questioning Chung on this subject. Later on, when Stone questioned Chung again, Stone came back to this press release. It turns out part of Chung’s duties was to keep a file of all Rambus activities. A copy of this press release wasn’t part of Chung’s Rambus file. [My read on this is Chung probably had a copy of the press release, and wrote some nasty four letter words on it. He probably then had to toss the copy. Or, Chung just didn’t want a Rambus victory press release in his files. Ha.] In any event, the impression Stone wanted to present is that Chung lied about seeing the original press release.
Continuing, Nessly shows a portion of the Aug 9, 2000 proposed license agreement Rambus wanted Hynix to sign. It states Rambus has the right to use all of Hynix patents (I believe also future patents) free of charge. Nessly states ‘Rambus wanted a license of Hynix patents for nothing’. Nessly was trying to elicit outrage from the jury.
On Stone’s turn, he asked Chung about the Hynix patent clause and if he had objected to it in has ‘comments to Steinberg’ email? I’m sure Chung knew it wasn’t in there, but he took the time to read through his own email and then declared no such objection was made. Then Chung stated that he objected to the free use of Hynix patents in a previous meeting. Stone replied: You couldn’t have, the agreement wasn’t out yet! Chung got caught in a lie.
Stone gets Chung to acknowledge that royalties are not paid when parties are in negotiations. Stone makes the inference that is why some negotiations take 7 – 8 years to complete. Stone then questions why Hynix chose this court to sue Rambus. It is not fast.
Stone also talked about (I believe) the ITC case where Rambus wanted to stop the import of Hitachi DRAM into the US. Hynix (and possibly others) got included in this case. Rambus fought to exclude Hynix from this case. Stating Rambus would rather negotiate with Hynix than litigate.
There were a few other issues (such as confusion who Avo Kanadjian is), but that was it for Chung.
Two of 9 pages of notes down. Ha. David Teece will come a bit later.
