It’s true, Samsung is about to find itself back in the courtroom facing another round of patent litigation, but this time, the lawsuit isn’t coming from a direct competitor. NVIDIA just filed its first patent lawsuit in the company’s 21 year history, and charging both Samsung and Qualcomm with infringing seven of its GPU patents. NVIDIA says that it’s tried to negotiate licensing fees with the companies directly, but have made no progress. “Samsung repeatedly said that it was mostly their suppliers’ problem,” the company wrote on its official blog. Now NVIDIA is taking them both to court.
Nvidia on Thursday fired the latest bullet in the widespread battle over patents, accusing Samsung and Qualcomm of ripping off its graphics technology for their smartphone chips. The Santa Clara, Calif., company, best known for making graphics chips for PCs, filed separate suits involving seven of its patents with the International Trade Commission and US District Court in Delaware. Nvidia said it asked the ITC to block shipments of several Samsung smartphones and tablets to the US and requested that the district court award damages for the alleged infringement. The products involved include several major devices from Samsung — the largest smartphone maker in the world — including the Galaxy Note Edge and Note 4 smartphones, which Samsung unveiled Wednesday, as well as the company’s flagship Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S4 phones. The Note 3 was also mentioned, as were several Samsung tablet computers, including the Galaxy Tab S, Tab 2 and Note Pro. Since the litigation involves hundreds of millions of Samsung devices, potential damages from a successful suit could be huge for Nvidia. “The volume here alone makes the potential very significant,” David Shannon, Nvidia’s chief administrative officer, said in an interview.
