Thursday, September 4th 2014
NVIDIA Files Complaints Against Samsung and Qualcomm for Patent Infringement
NVIDIA today announced that it has filed complaints against Samsung and Qualcomm at the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleging that the companies are both infringing NVIDIA GPU patents covering technology including programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing.
The identified Samsung products include the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 mobile phones; and the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab 2 computer tablets. Most of these devices incorporate Qualcomm mobile processors -- including the Snapdragon S4, 400, 600, 800, 801 and 805. Others are powered by Samsung Exynos mobile chips, which incorporate ARM's Mali and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GPU cores.
NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said: "As the world leader in visual computing, NVIDIA has invented technologies that are vital to mobile computing. We have the richest portfolio of computer graphics IP in the world, with 7,000 patents granted and pending, produced by the industry's best graphics engineers and backed by more than $9 billion in R&D.
"Our patented GPU inventions provide significant value to mobile devices. Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to use these in their products without a license from us. We are asking the courts to determine infringement of NVIDIA's GPU patents by all graphics architectures used in Samsung's mobile products and to establish their licensing value."
A pioneer in computer graphics, NVIDIA invented the GPU. The graphics processing unit enables computers to generate and display images. It brings to life the beautiful graphics that shape how people enjoy their mobile devices and is fundamental to the rise of mobile computing. NVIDIA GPUs are some of the most complex processors ever created, requiring over a thousand engineering-years to create and containing more than 7 billion transistors.
The identified Samsung products include the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 mobile phones; and the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab 2 computer tablets. Most of these devices incorporate Qualcomm mobile processors -- including the Snapdragon S4, 400, 600, 800, 801 and 805. Others are powered by Samsung Exynos mobile chips, which incorporate ARM's Mali and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GPU cores.
NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said: "As the world leader in visual computing, NVIDIA has invented technologies that are vital to mobile computing. We have the richest portfolio of computer graphics IP in the world, with 7,000 patents granted and pending, produced by the industry's best graphics engineers and backed by more than $9 billion in R&D.
"Our patented GPU inventions provide significant value to mobile devices. Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to use these in their products without a license from us. We are asking the courts to determine infringement of NVIDIA's GPU patents by all graphics architectures used in Samsung's mobile products and to establish their licensing value."
A pioneer in computer graphics, NVIDIA invented the GPU. The graphics processing unit enables computers to generate and display images. It brings to life the beautiful graphics that shape how people enjoy their mobile devices and is fundamental to the rise of mobile computing. NVIDIA GPUs are some of the most complex processors ever created, requiring over a thousand engineering-years to create and containing more than 7 billion transistors.
108 Comments on NVIDIA Files Complaints Against Samsung and Qualcomm for Patent Infringement
I mean, if Samsung and Qualcomm are using NV patents without licence it should be clear cut. It's not as if it's based on concepts is it? Like Apple suing for having a feature loosely described in it's patent cases.
First Adreno, Adreno 200, was also known as AMD Z430. Most similar AMD/ATI GPU to that was Xenos in XB360, but even that isn't that close. Sure, it's unified shaders etc, but that's about it.
Since Adreno 200, all Adrenos have been developed in-house by Qualcomm (by ex-AMD/ATI/BitBoys people who they aquired with the Imageon tech etc) and every iteration has pushed them further and further away from Z430 roots
EDIT: Seems Nvidia are too!
For those wondering the patents in question are:
www.google.com/patents/US6198488
www.google.com/patents/US6992667
www.google.com/patents/US7038685
www.google.com/patents/US7015913
www.google.com/patents/US6697063
www.google.com/patents/US7209140
www.google.com/patents/US6690372
"In particular, the Accused Products infringe claims 1, 19 and 20 of the ʼ488 Patent; claims 1-29 of the ʼ667 Patent; claims 1-5, 7-19, 21-23, 25-30, 34-36, 38, 41-43 of the ʼ685 Patent; claims 5-8, 10, 12-20 and 24-27 of the ʼ913 Patent; claims 7, 8, 11-13, 16-21, 23, 24, 28 and 29 of the ʼ063 Patent; claims 1-7, 8-10, 12 and 14 of the ʼ140 Patent; and claims 1-6, 9-16 and 19-25 of the ʼ372 Patent"
nvidianews.nvidia.com/imagelibrary/downloadmedia.ashx?MediaDetailsID=2996&SizeId=-1&SizeID=-1
Quick lets sue the competition
Theres a lot of fans, trolls and flame jugglers to be found already.... this thread may be cause for some special mod attention in the future lol
*special mention and thanks for @the54thvoid for being on point and level headed and @Maban for researching, in-depth, what the patents/IP was all about.
Sure that sounds reasonable.
At least four of the members of that list (and probably more if I could be arsed to check) have pretty extensive licensing agreements with Nvidia - maybe that's why they aren't listed in the complaint
Carried that And .... Samsung phones and phones with those components...
They might have agreements with the others... but samsung is the big fish... if they get an agreement out of them they can settle out of court with the smaller fishes.
If they attack all at once they seem more the patent troll.
Nvidia is going after end users, when Imagination Technologies is the company Apple, Samsung, and others are licensing the patents from, and if infringement is happening Imagination should be held up here, so again, Nvidia is butthurt over the lack of adoption of their mobile chips, and want to try and force their way into the market.
Remember when companies used to make something better to beat their competition instead of abusing the clueless draconian patent system.
Example, Slide to unlock.
I'm not saying that's the case here but it is all too common.