A significant legal challenge has emerged for Intel's leadership as shareholders aim for the company's representation of its foundry business performance. LR Trust has filed a lawsuit against former CEO Pat Gelsinger and current co-CEO David Zinsner, seeking to return substantial executive compensation amid allegations of misleading statements and financial mismanagement. The lawsuit centers on Intel Foundry Services (IFS), a division that was once positioned as a crucial growth engine for Team Blue. The Intel Foundry, as it is now called, is here referred as Intel Foundry Services, which was its older name back in 2023. According to court documents, LR Trust claims that while Intel's leadership painted an optimistic picture of IFS's trajectory, the division struggled to attract major clients and accumulated significant losses. Gelsinger's $207 million compensation package is at the heart of the dispute, where shareholders now demand that these funds should be returned to the company.

The legal action also targets additional compensation received by Zinsner, arguing that executive rewards were secured through misrepresenting the company's financial health. The allegations point to a troubled 2023, during which Intel's chip production unit reportedly lost $7 billion. These challenges extended into 2024, as increased investments in new fab facilities further strained the company's finances. The lawsuit alleges that executives issued "materially false and misleading" statements regarding cost savings and revenue potential, ultimately driving shareholder value to the very bottom. LR Trust's legal filing accuses Intel's leadership of breaching its financial duties through inadequate internal controls and inaccurate financial disclosures. Beyond seeking the return of executive compensation, the lawsuit pursues damages and legal cost reimbursement, with any recovered funds potentially being returned to Intel's coffers. Intel has yet to respond formally to these allegations. This is just another lawsuit in line as Intel already has several other lawsuits going on, with one recent from August.

Days of Arm-Qualcomm legal disputes continue, and with new day we get new updates. Gerard Williams III, CEO and founder of Nuvia, also one of the main brains behind Qualcomm's Oryon cores inside Snapdragon X processors, testified before the court that the chip design contains minimal Arm IP despite using the company's instruction set architecture. Williams estimated that "one percent or less" of the final design originated from Arm's IP. Despite Qualcomm using Arm ISA license, the company has very little Arm IP in its SoCs. Most of the Snapdragon X design has been done within Qualcomm's labs, in addition to Nuvia. Williams, who co-founded Nuvia in 2019, explained that while their processors use Arm's Armv8 instruction set, the core design was largely developed from scratch. Nuvia initially secured two non-transferable licenses from Arm: a Technology License Agreement (TLA) and an Architecture License Agreement (ALA).

These agreements allowed the company to develop custom cores while implementing Arm's instruction set. The development team created their own proprietary microarchitecture, including custom data paths and cache systems, rather than using Arm's existing designs. The controversy erupted when Qualcomm acquired Nuvia and announced plans to use the cores in PC processors rather than the initially intended datacenter applications. Arm demanded a renegotiation of licensing terms following the acquisition, which Qualcomm refused, arguing that its existing ALA covered Nuvia's designs. The dispute escalated when Arm revoked Nuvia's licenses in 2022 and terminated Qualcomm's Architecture License Agreement this October. Arm is now seeking the destruction of all Nuvia designs developed before the merger, arguing that the licensing agreements couldn't be transferred through acquisition. Qualcomm builds a case on TLA not being violated since the designs are mostly custom, so we have to see how the ruling proceeds. Arm wants to "hurt" Qualcomm with ALA revoking, and perhaps the final case ends with a settlement, given that Qualcomm is one of Arm's biggest customers.

Mozilla and Firefox have undergone a slew of changes of late, with the non-profit laying off its entire advocacy team and subsequently working with a famous design house on a branding overhaul. At the same time, Google is facing a monumental US antitrust lawsuit that could see the search giant prohibited from paying to be the default search engine on a variety of platforms. Speculation until now has predicted that if Google loses the antitrust case, it would deprive Mozilla and Firefox of a massive revenue stream, effectively ending the Firefox browser as we know it.

Perhaps in preparation for this imminent change, Mozilla has just announced a new search partnership with Ecosia, the search engine that prioritizes privacy and environmental concerns. Mozilla didn't explain what the partnership entails, but the official announcement seems to suggest that Ecosia won't become the default search engine for Firefox, although the blog post does encourage switching to Ecosia as the default search engine. Ecosia advertises that it is transparent when it comes to its earnings, and it donates all of its profits to environmental conservation efforts. It also embodies many of the privacy protections that Firefox has historically been known for. A more cynical reading of the situation might suggest that this is simply part of Mozilla trying to save face after its recent layoffs and a round of bad news.

Netlist, Inc. today announced that it won a $118 million damages award against Samsung Electronics Co., LTD., Samsung Electronics America, Inc., and Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. (together "Samsung") in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The award resulted from a jury trial which involved three Netlist patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 7,619,912, 11,093,417 and 10,268,608. The infringing products were all Samsung DDR4 RDIMMs and DDR4 LRDIMMs. Netlist filed the complaint against Samsung in August 2022.

The federal jury's unanimous verdict confirmed that all three Netlist patents had been infringed by Samsung, that none of the patents were invalid, that Samsung willfully infringed those patents, and that money damages were owed to Netlist for the infringement of all three patents.

The United States Supreme Court is about to decide on two cases brought by NVIDIA and Meta (Facebook) to avoid legal action against them for fraud on securities. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear NVIDIA's arguments on November 13 regarding the dismissal attempt of the securities class action lawsuit. Swedish investment firm E. Ohman J:or Fonder AB claims NVIDIA misled investors in 2017-2018 by understating its revenue dependency on cryptocurrency mining. NVIDIA's stand lies in the plaintiff's failure to meet the criteria established by the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Earlier this year, NVIDIA settled with the U.S. regulatory authority to pay $5.5 million to settle charges about the poor reporting of crypto mining's impact on its gaming segment.

The Supreme Court is also set to adjudicate the case brought by Facebook to dismiss the securities lawsuit where investors led by Amalgamated Bank accused the company of deceiving them by not revealing a 2015 data breach that involved Cambridge Analytica and which, in turn, affected more than 30 million users. The case came to the fore after Facebook's stock tanked in the light of reports about Cambridge Analytica's misuse of user data during the 2016 Trump campaign. Facebook maintains it wasn't obliged to disclose past breaches in risk statements, as these are supposedly forward-looking. The company had previously paid $100 million in penalty to the SEC and $5 billion to the FTC over the same issue. Recently, three Supreme Court decisions in June had eroded federal regulators, namely the SEC which is the principal regulator of securities fraud, and appear to bring more limitations to the power of private plaintiffs to be able to enforce federal rules set out for corporate misconduct.

Following Epic Games's recent victory over Apple, which effectively forced the iPhone maker to allow third-party apps on iOS in the EU, the game developer and distributor has won a similar case against Google, except in the US, this time. The ruling places several restrictions on what Google can and can't do when it comes to the Android operating system and how it positions its own apps and services on Android phones, including prohibiting Google from paying device manufacturers to include its Play software on their devices and forcing developers to use Google's payment platform.

The ruling (PDF) and its consequent restrictions will start on November 1, 2024, will last three years, and Google isn't particularly happy about the mandated changes, having already confirmed that it will appeal the decision, citing security concerns and arguing that the order would negatively affect developers: "these changes would put consumers' privacy and security at risk, make it harder for developers to promote their apps, and reduce competition on devices."

Xockets, inventor of Data Processing Unit (DPU) technology has launched a legal battle against NVIDIA and Microsoft. The lawsuit, filed in Texas, accuses the companies of forming an illegal cartel to avoid fair compensation for its patented DPU technology. Xockets claims that the Data Processing Unit technology its co-founder Parin Dalal invented in 2012 is fundamental to NVIDIA's GPU-enabled AI systems and Microsoft's AI platforms. The lawsuit alleges that NVIDIA has infringed on Xockets' patents since its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox, a deal NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang once called a "homerun." Xockets is seeking injunctions to halt the release of NVIDIA's new Blackwell GPU-enabled AI systems and Microsoft's use of these systems in their generative AI platforms.

The case touches on the bigger issues of intellectual property rights and the monopoly in the tech sector. Robert Cote, a Xockets board member, describes the suit as a fight against "Big Tech's predatory infringement playbook," accusing NVIDIA and Microsoft of making moves to devalue smaller companies' innovations. The AI revolution continues to transform the tech world, and this legal dispute may have a profound effect on the way intellectual property is valued and protected in the industry, possibly introducing new precedents for the relationship between tech giants and smaller innovators.

According to a recent report from Reuters, tech giant Intel is facing a significant legal challenge as shareholders file a lawsuit following a dramatic plunge in the company's stock price. The legal action comes from Intel's recent announcement of dividend suspensions and plans to lay off over 15,000 employees. The semiconductor behemoth saw its market value plummet by a staggering $32 billion in a single day, leaving investors reeling. The Construction Laborers Pension Trust of Greater St. Louis has initiated a proposed class action suit, naming Intel, CEO Pat Gelsinger, and CFO David Zinsner as defendants. The plaintiffs allege that the company made misleading statements about its business operations and manufacturing capabilities, artificially inflating its stock price between January 25 and August 1.

Intel's financial woes stem from underperforming contract foundry operations and 1% drop in revenue during the second quarter of 2024. While it may seem miniscule, declining revenue is paired with a negative 15.3% operating margin, resulting in a net loss of $1.61 billion. The company's August 1 announcement caught many shareholders off guard, prompting accusations of inadequate disclosure and transparency. This lawsuit is just one of several legal battles Intel is currently strangled in. The company is also locked in a patent dispute with R2 Semiconductor across multiple European countries, centering on voltage regulation technology. While Intel has secured a victory in the UK, it faces ongoing litigation in Germany, France, and Italy. Adding to Intel's troubles, a separate class action lawsuit is being explored on behalf of customers who purchased potentially faulty 13th and 14th-generation processors. The company also canceled its September 2024 Innovation event, citing poor financials, without any words on Arrow Lake or Lunar Lake. While the cancelation of events is sad, it is necessary to get financials back on track, and product launches should continue as usual.

Phanteks put out its first statement in response to reports about Lian Li filing a patent infringement lawsuit against it. Lian Li alleges that Phanteks D30 RGB line of compound fans for radiators infringe upon a design patent held by the company, and that Lian Li Uni Fan series implement the original design defined in the patent. In particular, the controversy is around the design of the mechanism that lets you daisy-chain individual fans without cables. In its defense, Phanteks says that during the development of the D30 RGB series, its lawyers were duly consulted to look for IP conflicts. The company stated that it will face the legal challenge and is confident to prove that its product is not in infringement of Lian Li IP. The statement by Phanteks follows.

We at Phanteks can confirm the filing of the patent infringement suit filed by a fellow PC enthusiast brand. We want to inform the community that our legal team is and has always properly handled any legal issue or communication that has arose.

From the start of the Phanteks D30 fan development, we set out to design an original product that innovates to provide new solutions to PC enthusiasts. We have consulted with patent lawyers during the development and prior to the announcement of the D30 fans and the fans were not found to infringe on the claims in the patent. Phanteks D30 fans are an original idea and have been issued patents in multiple countries to date.

We value and respect valid and enforceable IP rights and are confident that the result of this legal matter will confirm there is no infringement. We will continue our mission to serve the PC community by creating unique and innovative solutions.

Stephen Totilo, a writer for the gaming section of Axios, has uncovered an intriguing tidbit from Microsoft's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) court documents. He injected some humor into this finding and posted on Twitter: "Microsoft's lawyers with some Project Q hype." According to the legal team's footnotes: "Sony is also anticipated to release a handheld version of PlayStation 5 later this year for under $300." The handheld gaming device was first revealed during late May's PlayStation Showcase, but teaser material only revealed a small number of details.

Sony indicated that Project Q will feature a 1920 x 1080 display (with a max. 60 Hz refresh) and in-built WiFi connectivity that allows the user to stream games from a host PlayStation 5 system. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has gathered information from company sources since that showcase, and proposed that the device can only sustain 3-4 hour play times. He also proposed that Sony should seriously consider launching the device at a low price of $200, given the handheld's alleged limited function as Remote Play-only. It is odd that Microsoft's legal representatives think that Project Q will act as a highly portable PlayStation 5 console, but they likely did not pay attention to the limited details available to them.

GlobalFoundries (GF) today sued IBM for trade secret misappropriation. The complaint asserts the former semiconductor manufacturing company has unlawfully disclosed GF's confidential IP and trade secrets, after IBM sold its microelectronics business to GF in 2015. The technology at issue was collaboratively developed, over decades, by the companies in Albany, New York and the sole and exclusive right to license and disclose that technology was transferred to GF upon the sale.

In the legal action filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, GF asserts that IBM unlawfully disclosed GF IP and trade secrets to IBM partners including Intel and Japan's Rapidus, a newly formed advanced logic foundry, and by doing so, IBM is unjustly receiving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing income and other benefits.

AMD and Analog Devices, Inc. today announced that they have resolved all their ongoing patent litigations, based on mutually agreed upon terms. As part of this resolution, the two companies have committed to pursue technology collaborations to bring next generation solutions to their communications and data center customers.

For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. Analog Devices, Inc. operates at the center of the modern digital economy, converting real-world phenomena into actionable insight with its comprehensive suite of analog and mixed signal, power management, radio frequency (RF), and digital and sensor technologies. ADI serves 125,000 customers worldwide with more than 75,000 products in the industrial, communications, automotive, and consumer markets. ADI is headquartered in Wilmington, MA.

The world of semiconductor IP licensing is complex by nature. If you use a company's IP, you must agree to its licensing terms. Today, it is precisely those terms that are being breached in the event of Arm Ltd. filing a lawsuit against one of its biggest customers, Qualcomm. When Qualcomm acquired Nuvia Inc., regarded as one of the best CPU design teams in the industry, it transferred Arm-Nuvia license agreements as its own. It continued the development of Arm IP under Qualcomm's name. This is a standard restriction, as Arm's licensing prohibits these sorts of IP transfers among companies to protect the IP.

As the UK-headquartered company reports: "Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm's consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm's license agreements, Nuvia's licenses terminated in March 2022. Before and after that date, Arm made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution. In contrast, Qualcomm has breached the terms of the Arm license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses. Arm was left with no choice other than to bring this claim against Qualcomm and Nuvia to protect our IP, our business, and to ensure customers are able to access valid Arm-based products."

A federal judge in Seattle has recently ruled that the antitrust class-action lawsuit brought against Valve by Wolfire Games over their Steam Key Price Parity Provision can proceed. The Key Price Parity Provision is a policy that prohibits game developers from pricing their games cheaper on competing storefronts such as the Epic Games Store even if they offer lower fees. The judge noted that Valve "relies on provisions within Steamworks Documentation to impose conditions on how non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced." and that "Valve also threatens game publishers with punitive action, including removal of their Steam-enabled games, if they sell non-Steam-enabled versions of those games at lower prices,". The ruling states that allegations of the company exploiting it's market dominance to threaten and retaliate against developers were "sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct". This decision will allow for a class-action lawsuit to be brought against Valve.

Last year, we found out that a group of investors has accused NVIDIA that the company has misled its investors by reporting crypto revenue as gaming revenue numbers and making its gaming revenue seem much bigger than it is. The original lawsuit was filed in 2017 and it demanded that NVIDIA should pay one billion US Dollars to investors shall they be proven right. In 2017, cryptocurrency mining was at the same craze it is today, with people buying every possible card that exists and consumers having a hard time upgrading their PCs. Investors in NVIDIA corporation have believed that in 2017, the company has presented its cryptocurrency earning figures as a part of the gaming figures, thus giving misleading information about the company's success in the gaming market.

Today, we have information that NVIDIA has won this lawsuit. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam has dismissed the case and ruled that investors were unable to provide any significant evidence that the company has used such practices and misled investors. By taking this case off the company, NVIDIA will not be paying one billion USD to the accusing investors and the company continues operations as normal.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Sony by Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP regarding the alleged drift present on Sony's latest DualShock 5 controller which comes bundled with the PlayStation 5. The lawsuit was filed on February 12th in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and argues that the DualShock 5 controller is defective as it suffers from drift compromising the core functionality of the device. The lawsuit also notes the limited repair options available and Sony's lack of disclosure to customers even after numerous reported cases. Sony joins Nintendo and Microsoft who are both also in multiple court battles regarding drift on their respective controllers.

Intel has reportedly caught an ex-employee stealing confidential company files for the Xeon processor lineup. Dr. Varun Gupta, who left Intel last year to join Microsoft as Principal for Strategic Planning in Cloud and AI, has reportedly walked away with over 3900 files of confidential information. The stolen files, contain information about Intel's Xeon processors, pricing data, corporate strategies, and Intel's manufacturing capabilities of the chips. Dr. Gupta is being sued by Intel for 75,000 USD and liability to not use confidential Intel information again. The security forensics team at Intel has discovered that Dr. Gupta downloaded almost 4000 files on multiple USB drives, however, Dr. Gupta is denying these claims. We are waiting to hear more information about the situation as it evolves.

The epic (ahem) battle between Epic Games and Apple is becoming increasingly nastier, as Apple has communicated to the game and game engine developers that it plans on terminating all of Epic developer accounts on its ecosystem (both on iOS or MacOS) by August 28th. If done, this would impede not only Epic from developing for these systems, but also would impact any and all companies that actually employ the Unreal Engine in their development process, be it final or merely as a toolbox. It's case to say that Apple has its finger firmly set on the big, red button.

This move from Apple comes in wake of the calculated feud initiated by Epic Games last week with both Google and Apple. What some may have failed to see is that the Epic Games move was a coordinated, well-thought-out one, in that the company knew - or thought they knew - the full ramifications of what they were setting in motion. Epic Games, with its newfound budget and clout, is looking to become a banner for developers, spearheading a charge that is looking to brunt the walled garden approach. In fact, the company is even looking to form a "coalition of Apple critics", and is looking for companies to join its bandwagon in fighting against the Apple walled-garden and middle-man approach to software distribution.

Today, Epic Games has decided to file a lawsuit against both Apple and Google after both companies removed Fortnite form their platform app stores (Google Play and Apple App Store). Firstly, Apple has decided to remove the Fortnite app to form its App Store because the game violated the company's policy that all in-game payments must go through the Apple App Store system, instead of them being processed directly. That means that Apple can also apply its 30% cut on all the payments made in-game. After Apple has revoked the Fortnite app, Epic Games has decided to file a lawsuit that aims to fight the company's monopoly and make the iOS platform more developer-friendly. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said that Epic will not seek or accept any special deal that Apple may offer, but rather wants to fight for all developers.

Just hours after Apple decided to pull the Fortnite game from its App Store, Google has also removed the game from its Google Play Store. Google's Play Store policy about in-app payments says that all games must use Google Play in-app billing if they want to process payments, so Fortnite was pulled from it as well. In light of that move, Epic Games has also filed a lawsuit against Google on the same terms. The company wants to fight both Apple and Google in court and make them be more developer-friendly, especially Apple. We have to wait and see how the case progresses. Being that Apple is almost a $2 trillion company, it can surely afford lots of good lawyers, just as Google will. We want to express our support for Epic Games for going in the right direction, as we do need more open ecosystems.

JOLED, a Japanese Display, Sony and Panasonic group, has recently filed patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung. The fillings against Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display, and Samsung Electronics' U.S. subsidiary, were filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on June 22. There's a concurrent filling against Samsung's German subsidiary running through the District Court of Mannheim in Germany as well. JOLED claims Samsung has been infringing on JOLED's intelectual property on OLED technology (on which the company holds around 4,000 patents) particularly in Samsung Galaxy handsets that have been sold in the US.

We covered JOLED's entrance in to the OLED market back in December 2018. At the time, the company was entering the small-display market with 21.6" offerings. Meanwhile, the company received a 20 billion yen (around $187 million) cash injection from CSOT, a Chinese display company owned by TCL Corporation. This allowed to company to scale its OLED manufacturing for large display panels; the company announced mass production of TV-bound OLED panels on June 19th.

NVIDIA investors have recently filed a suit against the company, claiming that NVIDIA wrongfully detailed its revenue indicators between departments. The main point of contention here is that investors claim NVIDIA knowingly obfuscated the total value of the crypto market boom (and subsequent bust) from investors, thus painting a picture of the company's outlook than was different from reality (making demand for the Gaming division look higher than it was in reality) and exposing them to a different state of affairs and revenue gains than they expected. The investors say that NVIDIA knew that a not insignificant number of its graphics cards sold between 2017 and 2018 was being bought-up solely for the purpose of crypto mining, and that the company knew this (and even marketed GPUs specifically for that purpose).

The crypto mining boom had miners gobbling up all NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards that they could, with both companies seemingly increasing production to meet the crypto mining bubble demand. However, due to the economics of crypto mining, it was clear that any profits derived from this bubble would ultimately open the door to an explosive logistics problem, as miners offloaded their graphics cards to the second-hand market, which could ultimately harm NVIDIA's financial book. Of course, one can look at NVIDIA's revenue categories at the time to see that crypto would hardly fit neatly into either the Gaming, Professional Visualization, Datacenter, Auto, or OEM & IP divisions.

Apple late last week agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of slowing down iPhones without the knowledge or consent of users, motivating them to upgrade their devices or batteries. The settlement amount is marked at USD $500 million or $25 per member of the class (which could be adjusted depending on how many iPhones from the class are found eligible). The lawsuit is being heard by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, and its settlement offer by Apple is subject to his approval.

In the settlement offer papers by Apple, the company reportedly denies wrongdoing, and seeks to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation. Eligible members of the class are U.S. owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus or SE that ran the iOS 10.2.1 or later operating system. It also covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017. Initial outcry after discovery of Apple's secret CPU throttling cause the company to apologize for the practice, promise transparency in the future, and introduce the "Battery Health" feature in iOS that informs users of the decay of their device's lithium ion battery (ability to hold charge), and give performance throttling control to end-users.

AMD reached a settlement in the Class Action Lawsuit filed against it, over alleged false-marketing of the core-counts of its eight-core FX-series processors based on the "Bulldozer" microarchitecture. Each member of the Class receives a one-time payout of USD $35 per chip, while the company takes a hit of $12.1 million. The lawsuit dates back to 2015, when Tony Dickey, representing himself in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accused AMD of false-marketing of its FX-series "Bulldozer" processor of having 8 CPU cores. Over the following four years, the case gained traction as a Class Action was built against AMD this January.

In the months that followed the January set-up of a 12-member Jury to examine the case, lawyers representing the Class and AMD argued over the underlying technology that makes "Bulldozer" a multi-core processor, and eventually discussed what a fair settlement would be for the Class. They eventually agreed on a number - $12.1 million, or roughly $35 per chip AMD sold, which they agreed was "fair," and yet significantly less than the "$60 million in premiums" consumers contended they paid for these processors. Sifting through these numbers, it's important to understand what the Class consists of. It consists of U.S. consumers who became interested to be part of the Class Action, and who bought an 8-core processor based on the "Bulldozer" microarchitecture. It excludes consumers of every other "Bulldozer" derivative (4-core, 6-core parts, APUs; and follow-ups to "Bulldozer" such as "Piledriver," "Excavator," etc.).Image Credit: Taylor Alger

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world's leading specialty foundry based in the United States, today filed multiple lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany alleging that semiconductor manufacturing technologies used by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) infringe 16 GF patents. The lawsuits were filed today in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. Federal District Courts in the Districts of Delaware and the Western District of Texas, and the Regional Courts of Dusseldorf and Mannheim in Germany.

In filing the lawsuits, GF seeks orders that will prevent semiconductors produced with the infringing technology by Taiwan-based TSMC, the dominant semiconductor manufacturer, from being imported into the U.S. and Germany. These lawsuits require GF to name certain major customers of TSMC and downstream electronics companies, who, in most cases, are the actual importers of the products that incorporate the infringing TSMC technology. GF also seeks significant damages from TSMC based on TSMC's unlawful use of GF's proprietary technology in its tens of billions of dollars of sales.

The new year does not seem to bring good tidings alone for NVIDIA, with yet another class action lawsuit promising to keep their legal team busy. When we first posted about NVIDIA stock prices falling 2.1% following the launch of their Turing microarchitecture cards, there was no warning that just a few days after that post things would get worse. Indeed, as of today, the NVIDIA stock price on the NASDAQ stock market has fallen nearly 54% from the 1-year high that was only this past calendar quarter. California-based Schall law firm believes this drop in price can be attributed to more than just the volatile trading that has been ongoing in general in the stock markets, and has decided to file a class action lawsuit against NVIDIA.

Schall Law believes, and we quote, "the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. NVIDIA touted its ability to monitor the cryptocurrency market and make rapid changes to its business as necessary. The Company claimed to be "masters at managing our channel, and we understand the channel very well." NVIDIA also claimed to the market that any drop off in demand for its GPUs amongst cryptocurrency miners would not negatively impact the Company's business because of strong demand for GPUs from the gaming market. Based on these facts, the Company's public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about NVIDIA, investors suffered damages." These are strong words indeed, as oft is the case with the launch of class action lawsuits, and they have put out a press statement to accompany a link for those wanting to join along which can be seen in the source below.