Storage gone wild: perps on parade

The storage industry is getting its share of attention lately from the feds with allegations, criminal charges, civil complaints, lawsuits and even the occasional guilty plea. Storage is a big business and for some the stakes are high enough to justify shady or even illegal tactics.

Did Rambus Rambo JEDEC?

The Federal Trade Commission, in a 5-0 vote, today issued an opinion that Rambus "unlawfully monopolized" markets in four memory technologies.

The FTC opinion detailed the Rambus villainy:

JEDEC’s [Joint Electron Device Engineering Committee] members expected disclosure of both patents and patent applications that might be applicable to the work JEDEC was undertaking, if the patents ever were going to be enforced against JEDEC-compliant products. . . .

 

Rambus’s course of conduct played on these expectations. Rambus sat silently when other members discussed and adopted technologies that became subject to Rambus’s evolving patent claims. . . . Rambus twice evaded direct questions about its patent portfolio, coupling a nonresponsive answer with a reminder that it previously had disclosed a patent (which lacked any claims then relevant to JEDEC’s work). Rambus even provided JEDEC with a list of its patents that omitted the one patent Rambus believed covered JEDEC’s work.

One can only conclude that Rambus execs weren't sufficiently generous to the Republican National Committee (slogan: "Giving America the Best Government Money Can Buy!"). Or maybe they aren't very bright. Whatever, it doesn't look good for the Rambus folks. They may still wriggle out, but the case looks pretty damning.

Brocade: A Fabric of Lies? Of course, last week, the former CEO of Brocade, Greg Reyes, was busted on both civil and criminal charges for fraud for changing stock option grant dates. That led to a restatement of Brocade's FY2000 results from a $68 million dollar profit to a $951 million dollar LOSS. Oops! Mr. Reyes can afford a top lawyer - he sold over $300 million of Brocade stock - so it will be interesting to see what a jury thinks.

RAM Tough - Market Then there is the RAM price-fixing scheme Hynix pled guilty to. Prosecutors carved out a number of names from the agreement, so we can expect to see some RAM execs from Hynix and probably Micron getting free photos ops too.

Compared to this, sabotaging the standards process is child's play:

• Propose lots of cool stuff
• Vote for everyone else's cool stuff
• Implement 20% of the resulting standard
• Spend the next few years "testing" until the standard is no longer relevant

The result: no standards today, but a whole case of standards tomorrow. No nasty criminal charges either. That's a relief.

Cynical or Realistic? By now you may be wondering if you might receive a visit from a couple of beefy guys named Bruno and Vinnie complimenting you on "what a nice little storage network you got dere." Not to worry, they already get your money in the form of "maintenance".

All this bad behavior reminds me that the storage industry is made up of people prone to the usual ills: greed, sloth, vanity, hubris, and too many others to list. I'm glad to see some fouls called. It is reassuring to the majority of folks who do play by the rules, and a warning to those who are tempted not to.