Nvidia gets favourable ruling in its patent case against Samsung

by Mark Tyson on 7 April 2015, 13:35

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Samsung (005935.KS), Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM)

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Nvidia pleased with ITC pre-trial ruling

Nvidia initiated a lawsuit against Samsung and Qualcomm in September last year. The legal action had Nvidia accusing these rival chip designers of infringing several patents related to GPU technologies in their SoC designs. It was a notable development as Nvidia hasn't got any history of patent lawsuits and the targeted companies are so huge.

In its original filing at the US District Court in Delaware Nvidia said "Instead of developing its own graphics processing technology, Samsung purchases and uses Qualcomm’s infringing processors and GPUs, as well as other processors and GPUs that infringe the claims of the asserted patents." It wants that court, and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), to block products containing Qualcomm's Adreno, ARM's Mali or Imagination's PowerVR graphic chips until licensing fees are agreed and paid.

In an update published yesterday on the Nvidia Blog David M. Shannon, executive vice president, chief administrative officer and secretary of Nvidia, wrote about being pleased by progress so far. Shannon summarised that "The judge presiding over our patent case against Samsung and Qualcomm in the U.S. International Trade Commission has returned a pretrial claim construction ruling that favours NVIDIA’s preferred construction on nearly all of the claims that were disputed."

Six out of seven disputed claims will use Nvidia's preferred claim construction when the case starts trial in late June.

Samsung forecasts a quarterly operating profit of about $5.44bn

Samsung has some positive results coming up in its Q1 results. It has forecast a quarterly operating profit of about 5.9 trillion won ($5.44bn). This is much better than the average analyst expectation of 5.3 trillion won. However compared to a year ago Samsung is still bringing in 30 per cent less profit.

To push ahead with its hoped turnaround Samsung has decided to put design above function, reports the WSJ. Apparently Samsung became lazy and the result was the Galaxy S5. Its daring new Galaxy S6 Edge might become a better seller than the regular Galaxy S6, barring any production speed bumps.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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“Qualcomm's Adreno, ARM's Mali or Imagination's PowerVR”

Ouch, as we speculated a while ago when the papers were filed, this could be massive. How many of those are out in the wild or being used in new handsets still???
Apparently Samsung became lazy and the result was the Galaxy S5. Its daring new Galaxy S6 Edge might become a better seller than the regular Galaxy S6, barring any production speed bumps.
I'd agree with that - articles seem to be along the lines of “And we test the new Galaxy headline phone… (and there's a less interesting version too)”. If I was looking for a new Samsung phone (which I'm not - happy with my current LG) then I'd be looking straight at the Edge, the “conventional one” would have to be a good deal cheaper.
shaithis
“Qualcomm's Adreno, ARM's Mali or Imagination's PowerVR”

Ouch, as we speculated a while ago when the papers were filed, this could be massive. How many of those are out in the wild or being used in new handsets still???

That's actually a big mistake by nVidia, as that encompasses all other mobile soc's bar intel's.
Which should surely lead the judge to deam the technology essential and thus nVidia must abide by FRAND rules.

They are also going after the wrong party, Qualcomm is the party at fault but they're too well protected from nVidia.

Edit - They are going after mobile soc's with unified shaders, the first Qualcomm chip with one of those featured and AMD designed GPU, which surely was cross licensed from nVidia ?
I can't see the parties involved settling on withdrawal of products, i suspect that's just the stick to beat them with until they agree to a ‘reasonable’ settlement much in the same way Microsoft negotiated to take a cut from every Android device sold instead of banning them.
keithwalton
That's actually a big mistake by nVidia, as that encompasses all other mobile soc's bar intel's.
Which should surely lead the judge to deam the technology essential and thus nVidia must abide by FRAND rules.

They are also going after the wrong party, Qualcomm is the party at fault but they're too well protected from nVidia.

Edit - They are going after mobile soc's with unified shaders, the first Qualcomm chip with one of those featured and AMD designed GPU, which surely was cross licensed from nVidia ?

They're going after both Qualcomm and Samsung. And if the tech was cross licensed from Nvidia by AMD, it doesn't give AMD the right to give it away, or sell, or even loan, for resale, that tech.

Interestingly, the courts in Delaware are a LOT tighter on protocol, re: patent law, than, say, the East Texas district - meaning they require a lot more proof before they'll even look at the case. This could be interesting. And expensive, on a 10 digit plus scale.