sm overookea patent ct? of Subject: an overlooked patent claim? Date: Thu, 16 Jun 94 16:44:53 PDT From: dillon (John Dillon) To: exec, barth, ware CC: dillon Several syne ORAMs and the MOST ORAM include the auto-precharge feature. In this, the DRAM is autonatically precharged after 4 read or write coluna operation. I believe we might be able to claim this idea I had never heard of auto-srecharge before reading the Rambus patent, in "92. The prior art always had the pee-chip RAS wire. Frecharge occurred cnly when the wire RAS wire made a transition, That iss prior art precharge was always manual The original Rambus patent application clearly describes this feature on page 27 of the teachings. Today, the claim on this is part of divisional P008, which is pending. Claim 89 actually claims this feature. However, claim €9 is dependent on the much narrower clain 82 of a DRAM with internal select decoding. fle may be able to make a broader claim on auto-prechagre for "any" DRAM and therefore gain leverage over SORAM and MOST For SDRAMs, auto-precharge is mostly a convenience. It is not Fundamental to the performance or usefulness of SDRAM or MOST. But patenting this feature would have high harassment value, especially to the extent that third-party SORAM controllers depend on’ it. RH 386267 R 233773 (OUTSIDE COUNSEL ONLY 420022:16 EM "ex0738-001