You are 100% correct. Shredding documents is not illegal. The trouble comes in when you anticipate litigation and then you start shredding, which is what at least one court said was the case with Rambus. There is another court that disagreed, and the final chapter on the Rambus document shredding matter has yet to be written in all likelihood.

Every company needs a document retention policy that is strictly followed in all cases. If it is uniformly applied and implemented prior to disputes arising there is few, if any, problems.

While I agree with the thrust of what you say, I disagree that implementation of a document retention policy is what happened with Rambus. There is ample evidence to suggest that Rambus had multiple shredding days that were not a part of a detached, greater document retention policy and in fact happened only after consulting litigation counsel. Time will tell, but if that is what happened then it was clearly inappropriate. Rambus has already been sanctioned in court as a result of it, and the shredding lead to many believing Rambus had something to hide.

A word to the wise… all companies need to have and need to follow a document retention policy, and it must be in place before you really have something you want to shred.

-Gene

Although shredding of documents sounds bad, it is not illegal per se. And in fact there is a thriving business in Silicon Valley for just this purpose. If you google ‘shredding companies in san jose ca’ you get a long list of companies that do just that. Below is a link as a result of this google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=shredding+companies+san+jose+ca&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

The first company in this list, Bay Shred, claims 3000 happy Bay Area customers. If destruction of documents is illegal, there are a lot of companies in the Bay Area at risk. That doesn’t make sense to me. Is the appearance of wrong doing enough or is a clear court ruling still required. Bay Shred is only one of countless companies in this business. Rambus used one of these companies.

I think it is likely that all the companies in litigation with Rambus have used the services of similar companies to do the same thing Rambus did. The name for this process is ‘Document Retention Policy’ and most, if not all technical companies, and others have such a policy. Part of the policy is selecting what documents to keep, and how long, and what documents to destroy. This policy is usually set up with the consultation and participation of Counsel. That is what Rambus did.

Much like the FTC, the process to exonerate Rambus is on going at CAFC and I am confident they will prevail again. You should look into it.

Thanks for keeping an open mind.

That certainly seems to be true.

I think if Rambus had not engaged in shredding of documents this would have been obvious far sooner. When one shreds documents the message sent is that there is something to hide and when litigation is in the air this violates rules of acceptable conduct. That clouded so much and made it easy for me and others to believe the charges against Rambus.

-Gene

Where is your outrage that Rambus destroyed documents in at least 3 rounds of all day shredding? Whether you choose to recognize it or not, most of the problems faced by Rambus were either brought on or made worse by incompetent Rambus leadership. Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that they seem to have been railroaded. What it does do, however, is demonstrate that Rambus is far from Snow White. Had the leadership not engaged in provable and demonstrable fraud perhaps the company and Rambus shareholders would have been spared and the industry would have much sooner seen they were being railroaded on the standard setting front.

Place the blame where it belongs. Trying to make me and others a scapegoat for having the audacity to point out the truth is very unbecoming and childish.

-Gene

Where is the outrage, the personal offense that should accompany the fact that you now realize that you were hoodwinked while laymen all around you were able to divine the obvious truth while an innocent company was drawn and quartered in the public square.

Still, better late than never I suppose. Good luck at last.

Also here’s another link including a summation of some of the publicaly available evidence (besides what’s generaly known) Rambus might use in their upcoming price fixing case. http://www.investorvillage.com/iv2/smbd.asp?mb=3666&mn=340205&pt=msg&mid=6678338

Jedec actually trapped Rambus when they invite Rambus to join Jedec. This is how it turned out – Rambus spent over $300 million for lawyers.