Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We'll pause just a moment.
We'll go first to Jeff Schreiner with American Technology Research.
Jeff Schreiner - American Technology Research, Inc.
I was just wondering if we could talk a little bit about the opportunities outside litigation, right now? And what the company sees -- if we were to take away the option of litigation ever being successful, what the company really sees driving revenues and opportunities at this time?
Harold Hughes
Hi, Jeff. Harold speaking. I'm not exactly sure of the thrust of your question. I -- let me just talk a bit about our business model. And in doing that, hopefully, I'll hit upon the issues that concern you.
The business model has always been to continue to invest in technology. And as I've shown you or as I've discussed today, we've continued to create technology filed as patents and work with customers to use that technology in their products. That's obviously what we would be inclined to do.
On occasion, unfortunately, we find it necessary to take legal action, when people want to use the technology without paying for it. The company started with the Farmwald-Horowitz patent. But subsequent to that, we've invented what we believe to be very, very powerful pieces of technology, which has the market both moves forward at an accelerating -- the technology market moves forward at an accelerating rate.
We believe that the likelihood of that technology being an effective part of new products is increasing. Our technology, obviously, is focused on high performance. But we've also talked about low power and flash in the past, all of which, we think, will be crucial portions of technology products coming out now and in the future.
Having said that -- and Tom's here specifically to talk about litigation, were the questions to come up -- we don't intend to give up on our patent -- on our legal positions against those people violating our Farmwald-Horowitz patents. Did that answer your question?
Jeff Schreiner - American Technology Research, Inc.
Well, it kind of. It really comes down to, Harold, that then what's going to drive revenues? If litigation keeps kind of remaining in the backdrop as an opportunity, it certainly seems that investors don't really have the confidence really of late that there is really anything that Rambus can do in the near term. And when you talk about future, you're talking probably greater -- I would assume, you mean greater than 12 months.
And just wondering, kind of, how the company would really grow revenues over the next three to four quarters? It certainly seems in guidance --
Harold Hughes
Well, we talk to -- I talk more to customers than I do to shareholders. Maybe I should change that. But when we talk with customers, we're talking practically not at all about the Farmwald-Horowitz patents, which are the subjects of litigation. We're really talking about our current and future technology, which they in this hyper-competitive world see as something that's important for them to be profitable.
So that is, I think, the exciting part of our licensing work, now, and our development work. It's really about the future. Even the Farmwald-Horowitz, as valuable as they are, have an expiration date. And to be successful as a company -- and we're all very much dedicated to do that -- it's the future, it's the technology that we've invented in the last five to 10 years, which we believe will be the source of our revenue, literally now and going forward.
Jeff Schreiner - American Technology Research, Inc.
Okay. I don't want to take up too much time today. I just have one question for Tom. Tom, August 7 -- am I correct in the date that the Federal Circuit will be hearing the appeal in Rambus versus Samsung related to the Eastern District of Virginia case?
Tom Lavelle
Yes, that's correct. There's an oral argument scheduled for August 7 in Washington, DC.
Jeff Schreiner - American Technology Research, Inc.
And when will we expect a decision on that?
Tom Lavelle
Months -- months after that. Whether it's two, three, four, I don't really know.
Jeff Schreiner - American Technology Research, Inc.
Okay. Thank you, gentlemen.
Satish Rishi
Thanks, Jeff.
Operator
Next, we'll go to Michael Cohen with Pacific American Securities.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Yes. This question is for Harold. You used to talk a lot about the systems level licensing strategy, and you talked about that continually -- almost like the mantra for a while. And then, it sort of stopped around the time of the 2006 analyst day. And I was wondering how do you feel about the systems level licensing strategy and if you could talk about that a little bit?
Harold Hughes
I don't think that we've changed the strategy. Oftentimes, pricing things change, as the circumstances dictate. But it's with the system companies that we speak most frequently, Michael.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
I guess, I'm -- what I'm really wondering is why the change in communication to investors on that point.
Harold Hughes
I don't think it did. I think in my presentation today, I talked about creating technology for systems and semiconductor companies. And indeed, I'd let Sharon add some color here. The bulk of our licensing discussions and our business discussions tend to be with system-type companies.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay.
Harold Hughes
If you have perceived a change, you should read nothing into it.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay. That answers my question, because I did perceive a change, and it made me wonder if there was a change that really hadn't been talked about and just kind of suddenly dropped. My next question is regarding PCI Express. And I was wondering how you feel about the pursuing licensing opportunities there?
Harold Hughes
Well, in PCI express is almost by definition a standard. And to the extent it's a standard, it's in the interest of those creating the standard and using the standard products to license it as broadly as possible.
It's not a -- it is something that we will obviously do, as customers need it. We will tend to do more of it as it relates to the upcoming standard because, presumably there, the performance requirements are difficult to engineer. But it's not going to be the basis of our revenue strategy, going forward.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay. And --
Sharon Holt
And, Michael, I would just add to that. PCI Express is one of, obviously, many chip-to-chip interface standards. The focus of Rambus is on high-speed signaling, high-speed interface technology.
Clearly, we've had a primary focus in the memory space. But many of the signaling techniques that we develop are equally applicable to PCI Express or other interface standards. So you'll see us continue to participate in that space, where we have one of our critical customers with high value or a more complex implementation of that.
In terms of the more commodity side of the market, that's not a primary focus for us. We tend to focus on the leading edge, and you'll continue to see us do that.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay. On the leading edge, in flash memory, Harold had talked about having that as an applicable target area. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more detail on how you think your technology applies to flash?
Sharon Holt
Well, Michael, I'm not going to talk about this too much, because we have some very interesting progress in this area. We are engaged with flash companies looking at some future technology areas. We actually do think there is great potential to look at flash in a couple of different segments of the market.
Obviously, the mobile space is interesting. There are other market segments, where there are some more, I would say, unusual and innovative ways to use flash to reduce cost and power. And Rambus is very active in this area. We hope to have some announcements upcoming, but we're not prepared to disclose any of those today.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Are you focused in flash on how it's -- the memory communicates to the controller or it's specifically to unique use of the flash memory and high speed connections there?
Harold Hughes
That's it. Yes.
Sharon Holt
I would say both. Yes.
Harold Hughes
Yes.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay.
Harold Hughes
The wonderful thing about flash is it's low cost relative to DRAM and the fact that it need not be refreshed all the time. The bad thing is that you read through it and write through it very slowly. Solving these problems is hard. And we have found that in the solution of hard problems oftentimes lie wonderful revenue opportunities.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay. My next question is, probably, for Satish. As money ends up going in the FTC escrow account, will the amount of that escrow account be disclosed?
Satish Rishi
Not necessarily, because that money technically doesn't belong to us. So we will not be recognizing the revenues. So until we win the appeal, we will not be able to recognize any of that. So it is not my current plan to be talking about that portion of it, because we have no rights over that until after the decision is made. But if something changes, we'll let you know.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Is it --
Harold Hughes
But we expect to win.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay. And just maybe something to think about, going forward, I think, from an investor standpoint, it would be nice if we could have visibility. Of course, you can't include it in revenues but just what is in the account, so we know about the potential for our contingency, should you end up getting that.
And my last question, I was wondering -- and this is probably for Sharon -- do you know when DDR3 will finally emerge commercially available in the market?
Sharon Holt
So, obviously, I can't comment on behalf of the companies that are out there supplying DDR3 products. But certainly, our view based on what we've seen is that we will start seeing product more available on the market in the early part of 2008.
Michael Cohen - Pacific American Securities, LLC
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
Harold Hughes
Thank you, Michael.
Satish Rishi
All right. Thank you.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
We'll go next to Hamed Khorsand with BWS Financial.
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
And good afternoon. My question was regarding your TI announcements. Where is Rambus currently in the process of entering into the entertainment industry? I know the PlayStation 3. Then the next step was entering into the high-end television market. But where are you now into -- what appliances next are you looking at?
Sharon Holt
Hi, Hamed. This is Sharon. You know, I think, we've talked about the digital television space. And if you look at the next wave of markets, that should be interesting from an XDR perspective. Digital television is probably the next major one that we see on the horizon.
We've had a lot of activity going on this last year working with the system manufacturers as well as with their chip suppliers and our memory partners. And we've learned a lot about the requirements of those systems over the next several years. And we believe it's really not a matter of if, but when. XDR seems to have a very strong value proposition in that space.
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
All right. So I assume then, basically, as the television sets become cheaper, XDR becomes used on a wider scale?
Sharon Holt
I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question?
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
My question was, if -- is it safe for me to assume that when these digital television sets become lowered in price on a retail level then XDR usage would increase?
Sharon Holt
No. I think what you're seeing is, with the higher and higher resolutions and a lot more image processing going on in the DTV space, that's really driving the need for bandwidth, which is really pushing them much more in our direction.
XDR provides a lot of bandwidth with the fewest number of devices. So there is a very strong value prop at the system level, where they can actually save on their bill of materials costs by converting to XDR.
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
Okay. And my -- another question was how much of your revenues that you've reported for second quarter -- was that from last-minute kind of sales before the FTC order went into effect?
Sharon Holt
Well, I can't give you that level of granularity. But your question has given me an interesting opportunity to really talk about our revenue and how we forecast. You know, I do want to comment. You know, we've been talking about the impacts of the FTC order. And it certainly is true that Q3 -- the quarter that we're in now -- is where we're really seeing the impact with our current licensees.
But I want to remind you all that when the initial FTC decision came out about a year ago, that pretty much stalled all progress on negotiations that we had going on at that time. That stalling, if you will, continued until well after the remedy order came out earlier this year.
While we digested it and the rest of the market digested it, for those of you that have been keeping up on it, the documents were quite complex, and there was a lot of back and forth to make sure that we really understand it -- understood what we needed to do. And then we're able to communicate that to our existing licensees. We're now in a position where we can start to reengage potential licensees and, of course, we're going to move forward and do that.
But if you look at our current revenue stream, obviously, we have existing patent licensees with ongoing royalties. That's a part of our revenue stream, going forward. We have royalties that come from our product engagements, and then we also have contract revenues that come from the engineering programs that we have in place with many of our customers.
And so when we forecast, we look at those elements. And then, of course, we look at new deals that we might sign in the quarter coming up. But we only forecast those that we're pretty darned sure, like a 100% sure, are going to come in. We have a very, what we call, a poppy business driven by big deals. And we're very careful not to put speculative deals into our forecast and into our guidance.
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
Okay. And my last question is -- were there any 10% customers during the quarter?
Satish Rishi
We typically don't announce that on the call. We'll have them in the financials when we report them.
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
Okay. But you won't be reporting financials for a while, though. So you can't disclose them?
Satish Rishi
No. No, I can't. I can't jump the gun here on that.
Hamed Khorsand - BWS Financial
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Satish Rishi
All right. Thank you.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Rishi for any closing remarks.
Satish Rishi
Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for joining us on the call. I look forward to speaking to you soon. Thank you.
Operator
That does conclude today's conference call. Again, thank you all for your participation, and have a great day.
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