Nvidia seeking injunction, damages in patent lawsuit against Qualcomm and Samsung

Shawn Knight

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nvidia samsung qualcomm lawsuit

Nvidia on Thursday announced they have filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm and Samsung. The graphics maker is accusing the two of infringing on several of its graphics processing unit patents and is seeking to block shipments of several Samsung Galaxy devices including the Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy Note Edge – both unveiled on Wednesday at IFA 2014 in Berlin.

The patent suit, the first in Nvidia’s 21 year history, was filed with the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US District Court in Delaware. In it, the company is asking the ITC to block shipments of Samsung Galaxy mobile phones and tablets containing Qualcomm’s Adreno, ARM’s Mali or Imagination’s PowerVR graphics architectures.

Nvidia has also asked the Delaware court to award damages for the infringement of the patents.

In a blog post on the matter, the chipmaker said their licensing team negotiated directly with Samsung on a patent portfolio license. They held several meetings to demonstrate how the patents apply to all of Samsung’s mobile devices and to all the graphics architectures they use.

Nvidia said they made no progress as Samsung repeatedly told them it was mostly their suppliers’ problem.

Specifically, Nvidia said they have chosen seven patents from their portfolio to pursue in the lawsuit including technology related to programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing in GPUs.

Samsung declined to comment on the matter while Qualcomm wasn’t immediately available for comment.

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nVidia must be disappointed with their current profits and are looking for alternative ways to inflate it, either that of they've mistakenly hired some ex Apple lawyers.
 
nVidia must be disappointed with their current profits and are looking for alternative ways to inflate it, either that of they've mistakenly hired some ex Apple lawyers.
I thought NVidia is resting in cloud 9 as their energy-efficient but powerful gpu series are on par with energy-hungry amd gpu series.

or is it NV? :)
 
nVidia must be disappointed with their current profits and are looking for alternative ways to inflate it, either that of they've mistakenly hired some ex Apple lawyers.
Alternatively, the licensing talks that have apparently been in progress for two years came to nothing when Samsung and Qualcomm both thought the other should pay the fee - what with both of them being destitute an' all.
The fact that the suit avoids ARM's off the shelf Mali 400MP that most other vendors use, and specifically targets the Samsung-only Mali T628 in the complaint (points 95-98 (pdf), would seem to add weight to the reasoning.
Guess we'll have to wait for Samsung and Qualcomm's official response to find out if the sabre rattling has merit - a counter-suit within a few days from both/either would be the standard bargaining indicator.
 
So samsung says "Hey Qualcomm made the samsung phones they just slapped our name on it for a licensing fee its nothing to do with us"

Come on samsung dont be THAT stupid...
 
So, Samsung is innovating other companies' ideas too, not just Apple's.
 
So samsung says "Hey Qualcomm made the samsung phones they just slapped our name on it for a licensing fee its nothing to do with us"
Come on samsung dont be THAT stupid...
Well, Samsung's Exynos leverages ARM's processor and Mali GPU, so that wouldn't fly I don't think. If ARM's licensing were a little more transparent then it would be easier to account for who has cross-license and IP license agreements in place. Nvidia has known licensing agreements with Intel, AMD, ARM itself for it's processor, and from what I've seen, a few of the ARM licensees.
The suit seems to avoid ARM's off the shelf Mali GPUs, and earlier Adreno's that used mainly ATI/AMD/BitBoys IP. The other big question mark would be Apple, since it's GPUs are also from Imagination Tech's PowerVR series 5 and 6 (Rogue) that are in Nvidia's complaint regarding Samsung products. Does Apple already have a licensing deal with Nvidia? If they don't I could imagine Apple's lawyers frothing at the mouth and straining their leashes trying to get into this fight.
 
Does Apple already have a licensing deal with Nvidia? If they don't I could imagine Apple's lawyers frothing at the mouth and straining their leashes trying to get into this fight.
The mental image that gave me actually made me laugh, I love it.
 
Me...I said:
Guess we'll have to wait for Samsung and Qualcomm's official response to find out if the sabre rattling has merit - a counter-suit within a few days from both/either would be the standard bargaining indicator.
Took a little longer than I expected, but Samsung's countersuit has been lodged. Poor boutique system builder Velocity Micro gets slapped with a suit also for the crime of being in a state where the court system expedites civil claims.
 
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