According to Bloomberg, Arm Holding PLC, the holding company behind the Arm instruction set and Arm chip designs, just issued a 60-day notice period of license retirement to Qualcomm, its long-time partner. The UK-based ISA provider has notified Qualcomm that it will cancel the Arm ISA architectural license agreement after the contract-mandated 60-day notice. The issues between the two arose in 2022, just a year after Qualcomm acquired Nuvia and its IP. Arm filed a lawsuit claiming that the reason was "Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm's consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm's license agreements." To transfer Nuvia core licensing, Qualcomm would need to ask Arm first and create a new licensing deal.

The licensing reworking came just in time when Qualcomm experienced its biggest expansion. The new Snapdragon 8 Elite is being used in the mobile sector, the Snapdragon X Elite/Plus is being used in Copilot+ PCs, and the automotive sector is also getting the new Snapdragon Cockpit/Ride Elite chipsets. Most of that is centered around Nuvia Oryon core IP, a high-performance, low-power design. Arm's representatives declined to comment on this move for Bloomberg, while a Qualcomm spokesman noted that the British company was trying to "strong-arm a longtime partner."

The open-source Yuzu Switch Emulator attracted immediate Nintendo attention, around The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's launch window. Last Monday, news reports put many spotlights on freshly-filed legal documentation—the Japanese multinational video game firm's North American office took Tropic Haze LLC to court in Rhode Island. The aforementioned limited liability company created and distributed Yuzu and Citra—Switch and 3DS software emulators (respectively). Nintendo's lawsuit claimed that Tropic Haze's Yuzu software illegally circumvents their software encryption, and played a significant role in facilitating piracy "at a colossal scale." A prime example was presented in the case of Tears of the Kingdom—allegedly over one million illicit digital copies were distributed prior to its official retail release. The lawsuit proposed that "defendant (Tropic Haze) is thus secondarily liable for the infringement committed by the users to whom it distributes Yuzu."

According to a new filing, Tropic Haze has agreed to cease all operations and pay Nintendo $2.4 million in damages. This swift announcement arrived much earlier than expected—Yuzu's developer reportedly "lawyered up" late last week. According to Eurogamer: "over the weekend, Tropic Haze announced it had retained the legal services of an attorney and would be responding Nintendo's lawsuit within 60 days, but a new filing has now been spotted confirming both parties have reached a settlement—pending the court's final approval." A permanent injunction prevents Tropic Haze from: "offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu." This order seemingly extends to Citra (their 3DS emulator): "other software or devices that circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures." Tropic Haze has been ordered to surrender its website domains and turn in all held physical circumvention devices. Yuzu creators are required to not establish "new entities or associations to develop similar Nintendo emulation software" in the future. Open-source "Nuzu" and "Suyu" follow-ups/spiritual successors have already popped up online.

Game File reporter, Stephen Totilo, has discovered a new Nintendo-filed legal document—the Japanese multinational video game company's North American office is ready to do battle (in court) with Tropic Haze. The latter's Yuzu Switch Emulator is the focus of Nintendo's legal case—initiated on February 26, at the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Totilo's social media summary of goings-on stated: "Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator." The Dolphin Emulator—a Gamecube and Wii emulation platform—was removed from Valve's Steam store last year, following the sending of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown order, but its development team was not pursued in US courts. The House of Mario is reportedly fiercely protective of its intellectual properties and technologies—gaining a hard-nosed reputation for engaging in plenty of legal action over decades past.

Nintendo's federal-level lawsuit alleges that Tropic Haze's Yuzu Switch Emulator played a large part in widespread illegal distribution of a 2023 flagship game title. They believe that "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" was pirated over one million times in a time period prior to its official launch on Switch consoles, while Yuzu's Patreon funding almost doubled within the same cycle. Nintendo stated (through filed documentation): "With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch...In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others' copyrighted works." They argue that Yuzu is capable of circumventing the Switch console's many layers of encryption—Tropic Haze's software, in their opinion, is "primarily designed" to break Switch software protections.

The US Government, specifically the Department of Defense (DoD), has under the Trump administration blacklisted the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. This was a way to impose sanctions on the Chinese company as it was believed that Xiaomi was involved with the Chinese military, thus the Trump organization had problems having US investors taking a share of it. However, the company has issued legal proceedings against the US government for making such claims, and now the US govt., administrated by the President Joe Biden, has reached an agreement with the company. Xiaomi managed to prove that it is not owned or controlled by the Chinese military, so the US DoD has removed the company from its blacklist.

This has caused the company shares to soar on the Hong Kong stock exchange by as much as 6.7% after the news appeared. "The Biden Administration is deeply concerned about potential U.S. investments in companies linked to the Chinese military and fully committed to keeping up pressure on such companies", said Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.

The UK government has stalled NVIDIA's $40 billion acquisition of Arm by constituting an investigation in "public interest." This investigation will look into the national security implications to the UK, of the acquisition. Although Arm is being transacted between Japan's SoftBank Holdings and American NVIDIA, Arm itself is a UK-based entity. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will lead the investigation, and file a report with the UK government by June 30, 2021.

NVIDIA responded to the development, stating that the acquisition has no material national-security issues affecting the UK. "We will continue to work closely with the British authorities, as we have done since the announcement of this deal," NVIDIA stated. Leading tech firms, namely Google, Qualcomm, and Microsoft, etc., voiced apprehensions over the deal. Unlike SoftBank, NVIDIA is a chip-designer in its own right, and could withhold cutting-edge Arm technology to itself, giving its CPUs/SoCs a competitive edge over other Arm licensees, these firms believe.

Today we are finding out that Intel has allegedly infringed FinFET patents of Microelectronics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. On July 28th, the patent review committee has heard an application that accuses Intel of violating a patent 201110240931.5 commonly referred to as FinFET patent. The patent dates back to 2011, and it comes from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, mainly Microelectronics Institute. The Chinese patent holders are asking for as much as 200 million yuan, which roughly translates to 28,664,380 US dollars. Given that this patent infringement is a major one for Intel, it is sure that a company will be pursued extensively in court. All of the Intel's semiconductors use FinFET technology, and if this is true, the violation is rather big. For more in detail reading, please refer to the source which goes through the history of Intel and Microelectronics Institute patent violation filing.

TSMC, the world's leading global innovator in semiconductor manufacturing, filed multiple lawsuits on September 30, 2019 against GlobalFoundries in the United States, Germany and Singapore for its ongoing infringement of 25 TSMC patents by at least its 40nm, 28nm, 22nm, 14nm, and 12nm node processes. In the complaints, TSMC demands injunctions to stop GlobalFoundries' manufacture and sale of infringing semiconductor products. TSMC also seeks substantial monetary damages from GlobalFoundries for its sale of infringing semiconductor products and unlawful use of TSMC's patented semiconductor technologies.

The 25 TSMC patents in the complaints relate to a diverse set of technologies, including FinFET designs, shallow trench isolation techniques, double patterning methods, advanced seal rings and gate structures, and innovative contact etch stop layer designs. These specific technologies cover the core features of mature and advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes. The patents at issue comprise just a small portion of TSMC's extensive portfolio that numbers more than 37,000 granted patents worldwide. TSMC was ranked one of the top 10 companies for U.S. patent grants last year, for the third consecutive year.

This is still a developing story, however it has matured enough to where we feel confident about discussing it. It kicked off last week when the proprietor of Mayhem Solutions Ltd, better known simply as Mayhems, shared information regarding Thermaltake introducing their own Pastel-branded coolants to be used in the PC DIY water cooling sector. Mayhems has had a trademark registered for this in the UK since 2015, and let Thermaltake know via email to try to reach an amenable solution. Indeed, EKWB and Alphacool had both used the Pastel trademark with Mayhems' permission in the past, some of which also came via using the Mayhems Pastel base under their respective brand names. After word from Thermaltake's legal team, first trying to defend the use of Pastel as a generic term, and then saying that they would work on a compromise, Mayhems told us they have not heard back from the company in over a week since the last correspondence, and are forced to take legal action to prevent Thermaltake P1000 pastel coolants to be sold in the UK.

We wanted to have due diligence in our reporting, and contacted Thermaltake ourselves for a statement. After receiving word that they will send us one, we too have not heard back from the company since. We respect Thermaltake's decision, and are always willing to update this post if they do send us one, but in the meantime we went further. Indeed, a careful look at the trademark (screenshots seen below) confirms Mayhem's legal stance on this matter. However, it is not easy to enforce a trademark in the court. It would be all the more harder to do so when there can be an argument made about the use of the term pastel, which no doubt Thermaltake would argue is not necessarily tied to the coolant, but more as the general term to showcase the various colors and the opaque-nature of said coolants. More on this story past the break, including quotes from retailers we spoke to.

Earlier in January of this year, PUBG Corp threw a lawsuit at Epic Games, looking to assert its rights to the "Battle Royale" mode that game was mimicking from the original Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. It now seems that PUBG Corp has decided to throw in the towel over its pursuit of Epic Games' Fortnite as a "straight copy" of its battle royale mode - a move that came only after Fortnite had eclipsed PUBG Corp's game in concurrent players and revenue generation.

Perhaps at least part of this issue was dealt with by Chinese giant Tencent, which owns part of Bluehole Inc (PUBG Corp's parent company) and part of Epic Games - it hurts investors when two of their pots are throwing dirt at each other. Another part of the equation - and the most likely, considering the amount of time the lawsuit survived in court - pertains to how PUBG makes use of EPIC Games' Unreal Engine. I'd say it's at least slightly important to keep a good relationship with such a company.

Sometimes as a news reporter, a story drops right into your lap. That was the case with me and my latest experience with my ISP rented modem, which I recently upgraded to support higher speeds.

The modem I got was based on the Puma 6 chipset, which is an Atom based chipset from Intel. I immediately noticed a more sluggish web experience, despite the bandwidth nearly doubling (going from 8 downstream pipes to 24 will do that). I began to google this issue, and came up with a much-underreported issue from a thread on dslreports.com where the dedicated members there have extensively documented the issues with the Puma 6 chipset, and Intel's apparent inability to patch them.

Tough breakups aren't easy by definition, and the breakup between legendary programmer John Carmack and former employer ZeniMax has probably been one of the most worded of all. Now, Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack has filed a lawsuit against ZeniMax for $22.5 million, money he claims ZeniMax still owes him from id Softwares' $150 million sale to ZeniMax back in 2009. Carmack says the amount he is filling for is part of the $45 million owed to him for the sale, of which he has already been able to convert 22.5 million (the non-missing half) in ZeniMax shares. However, Carmack says ZeniMax is unlawfully withholding the remaining $22.5 million because of "sour grapes".

Carmack claims ZeniMax is holding back the payment as payback for "a series of allegations regarding claimed violations of Mr. Carmack's Employment Agreement", referencing the Zenimax/Facebook lawsuit over the supposed theft of trade secrets. However, Oculus was recently found not guilty of stealing trade secrets, though the court ordered the company to pay $500 million for copyright infringement, false designation and the violation of Palmer Luckey's NDA. Oculus is appealing the case, calling the prior ruling "legally flawed and factually unwarranted."

As a follow-up to the late-June 2016 decision by NVIDIA to enter a settlement with owners of GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards over the 2015 class-action lawsuit over falsely advertised memory amount, a website ominously named gtx970settlement.com sprung up by the law firms representing the class. This website connects legitimate owners of the GeForce GTX 970 graphics card to the class, and enables them to claim the USD $30 in damages NVIDIA agreed to pay each member of the class. You have to be a resident of the United States to enter the class, because the court adjudicating the class-action lawsuit only has jurisdiction over the US.

Game modder Marty McFly Modding accused NVIDIA of stealing their post-processing shaders for Ansel without authorization or credit. Ansel, NVIDIA's pioneering "in-game photography" tech, which lets you take artistic stills (2D and VR) of your games, gives you additional post-processing tools, to let you enhance your shot. Some of these post-processing shaders, Marty McFly Modding alleges, was copied verbatim by the people behind NVIDIA Ansel, without even a third-party credit.

Marty McFly Modding stated on their Facebook page that "Its (Ansel's) custom.fx contains almost 1:1 the colormod pass with my original descriptions. Same for the other files, where many variable names, code, comments and defines match MasterEffect code, also my 1D gausian blur solution, 1:1, just DX11 ported. There may be even more Framework code in it, I just recognized my own code, there might be SweetFX/other code in it as well. While it's an honour to be apprechiated by such a big company, they could at least drop some credits like we do."

AMD issued a response to a recent report which states that liquid cooling components maker Asetek issued a cease-and-desist to the company, to stop sales of the Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card, which implements a closed-loop liquid-cooling solution made by Cooler Master. In its response, AMD argues that the jury in the Asetek vs. CMI (Cooler Master) case did not mention the cooling solution of the Radeon R9 Fury X specifically, as infringing Asetek-held patents. The statement reads:

"We are aware that Asetek has sued Cooler Master. While we defer to Cooler Master regarding the details of the litigation, we understand that the jury in that case did not find that the Cooler Master heat sink currently used with the Radeon Fury X infringed any of Asetek's patents."

While AMD is right in pointing out that the original judgement does not name the R9 Fury X, or its cooling solution as an infringing product; there's no word on whether AMD will stop sales of the card. From the looks of it, AMD has no plans to stop sales of its flagship graphics product, and appears to have convincing legal arguments up its sleeves to continue selling the card, in the near future.

In late 2014, Asetek won a patent infringement case against CMI USA, Inc. ("CMI") at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The jury unanimously ruled in favor of Asetek, and awarded damages based on a 14.5% royalty rate. In a post trial motion, CMI demanded a judgement as a matter of law and a new trial.

The court yesterday denied CMI's demands, and instead substantially followed Asetek's requests and issued a permanent injunction barring CMI and its parent Cooler Master from selling certain infringing products into the Unites States. Also, the judge awarded Asetek enhanced damages i.e., a 25.375% royalty rate, on CMI's revenues for sales of infringing products beginning January 1, 2015. It should be noted that the matter is appealable by CMI.

Over-promising and under-delivering with its very first accelerated processing units (APU), codenamed "Llano," is coming back to haunt AMD, with a US District Court ruling that the company must face claims from investors over potential securities fraud. Launched in Q3-2012, AMD's A-series "Llano" APUs went largely unsold due to various factors including lack of product appeal, competition from Intel, forcing AMD to pull in its second-generation "Trinity" APU too soon. The related development first took shape in January 2014.

The swelling unsold "Llano" inventory forced an inventory writedown of $100 million, reducing the company's worth by nearly that much overnight, and tanking the value of the AMD stock. While AMD talked about the concept of an APU for years, Intel was the first to come out with a processor that integrates a graphics processor, with its Core i3 and Core i5 "Clarkdale" processors. The suit claims that AMD misrepresented production of "Llano" chips to its investors despite supply issues from its foundry partner GlobalFoundries, artificially inflating the value of the company in 2011-12. By the time production finally caught up, it ended up overproducing resulting in unsold inventory, and in consequence, the $100 million writeoff.

NVIDIA plans to release a fix for the GeForce GTX 970 memory allocation issue. In an informal statement to users of the GeForce Forums, an NVIDIA employee said that the company is working on a driver update that "will tune what's allocated where in memory to further improve performance." The employee also stressed that the GTX 970 is still the best performing graphics card at its price-point, and if current owners are not satisfied with their purchase, they should return it for a refund or exchange.

It looks like NVIDIA's first response to the GeForce GTX 970 memory allocation controversy clearly came from engineers who were pulled out of their weekend plans, and hence was too ambiguously technical (even for us). It's only on Monday that NVIDIA PR swung into action, offering a more user-friendly explanation on what the GTX 970 issue is, and how exactly did they carve the GM204 up, when creating the card.

According to an Anandtech report, which cites that easy explanation from NVIDIA, the company was not truthful about specs of GTX 970, at launch. For example, the non-public document NVIDIA gave out to reviewers (which gives them detailed tech-specs), had clearly mentioned ROP count of the GTX 970 to be 64. Reviewers used that count in their reviews. TechPowerUp GPU-Z shows ROP count as reported by the driver, but it has no way of telling just how many of those "enabled" ROPs are "active." The media reviewing the card were hence led to believe that the GTX 970 was carved out by simply disabling three out of sixteen streaming multiprocessors (SMMs), the basic indivisible subunits of the GM204 chip, with no mention of other components like the ROP count, and L2 cache amount being changed from the GTX 980 (a full-fledged implementation of this silicon).

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, provides business update for the fourth quarter of 2013.

The Company is disclosing certain preliminary information about its fourth quarter of fiscal 2013 that ended on February 28, 2013, subject to certain closing procedures and further review by the Company and its auditors. As previously reported the Company estimated that revenue in each of the unreported quarters ending August 31, 2012 and November 30, 2012 is in the range of $65 million to $85 million. This range takes into effect the impact of the reclassification of certain customer costs from operating expenses to revenue, the significant reduction in channel inventory, the timing of revenue recognition and reserves for product returns. The preliminary revenue range for the unreported fourth quarter of fiscal 2013 is estimated to be between $65 million and $70 million.

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), a global leader in integrated silicon solutions, announced that on December 26, 2012, a jury in Pittsburgh delivered a verdict in a lawsuit brought by Carnegie Mellon University ("CMU") against Marvell and Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. ("MSI"), Marvell's U.S. operating subsidiary, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In the lawsuit, CMU asserted that Marvell infringed two CMU patents claiming a specific technique related to read channel detector technology that is not practiced by any Marvell chips.

Specifically, the patents at issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 6,201,839 and 6,438,180. Marvell and MSI strongly believe the theoretical methods described in these patents cannot practically be built in silicon even using the most advanced techniques available today, let alone with the technology available a decade ago. Rather, Marvell and MSI use their own patented read channel technology developed in house. Nevertheless, the jury disagreed with Marvell and MSI's position and found that the patents were literally and willfully infringed and valid, and awarded damages in the amount of $1.17 billion.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that the Audit Committee's investigation, assisted by third party legal and financial advisors, has been substantially completed and a preliminary report has been provided to the Audit Committee. While there continue to be various matters requiring further investigation, the Company believes they will be concluded shortly. The Audit Committee has approved this report and, in consultation with management, concluded that the Company should restate the results for the first quarter of fiscal 2013, as well as the results for certain quarters of fiscal 2012 and for the fiscal year 2012.

The restatements primarily relate to the timing of revenue recognition, the classification of certain customer incentive costs and for the level of reserves for product returns. The number of prior periods affected and the impact of the adjustments will be disclosed in more detail in the Company's restated financial statements, which will be provided as soon as practical. The Board and management are in discussions with Crowe Horwath LLP, the Company's independent auditors regarding the matters identified in the investigation.

A British court ruled that Samsung Galaxy Tab did not pose a copyright infringement of Apple iPad. Apple and Samsung are locked in design patent infringement lawsuits around the world, with the UK being an important market for both. In addition to its ruling, the court told Apple to issue a public apology to Samsung and its customers in advertisements, with a font size no smaller than Arial 14. The court of appeal upheld its judgement that and Samsung did not infringe Apple's design.

Block & Leviton LLP, a Boston -based law firm representing investors nationwide, is investigating possible securities law violations involving OCZ Technology Group, Inc. ("OCZ" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: OCZ).

The investigation is related to allegations that certain statements issued by the Company between July 10, 2012 and October 10, 2012 concerning OCZ's financial performance were knowingly false and misleading when made. On Wednesday, October 10, 2012, the Company issued a press release announcing that it was delaying the filing of its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2013, which ended August 31, 2012. The press release also disclosed that the Company's second quarter revenue will be "materially lower" than its previous guidance released on September 5, 2012, which was in the range of $110 to $120 million, "principally due to the impact of customer incentive programs," and that the Company expects to report a "significant net loss." Shortly after the release of this news, shares of OCZ dropped nearly 42 percent from a close of $3.15 on October 9, 2012 to close at $1.88 per share on October 10, 2012.

Activision is already going at it in court with Jason West and Vince Zampella over their dismissal from Infinity Ward in 2009, but a clause in a Memorandum of Understanding filed with the lost wages and royalties suit in 2010 could affect the recently announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. According to Game Informer, Activision continues to hold the rights to the Call of Duty franchise, but Call of Duty games set in "modern day (post Vietnam), the near future or distant future" would be retained by Infinity Ward. With Black Ops 2 set in 2025, developer Treyarch put a lot of thought in the futuristic setting. An intellectual property attorney said that, if West and Zampella win their suit, Activision could be forced to pull the game, but a more likely scenario is money damages awarded by the court.

However, clause 4(D) at the end of the memorandum specifically states that if IW management (Ward and Zampella) are no longer employed by Activision, then the terms of the memorandum are no longer in effect. This seems to override any potential problem, but it is yet another issue that the court must rule on. With Black Ops 2 setting pre-order records, the game could be a cash cow for Activision. A ruling against the publishing giant, though, could mean West and Zampella would get prime cuts of that cow if the employment clause is not enforced.

ShackNews is reporting Activision Blizzard is being sued by Worlds Inc., for violating a patent on virtual worlds. The firm claims that games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft violate its patent, and are requesting "fair compensation." The patent covers a "system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space," reports Games Industry International. That may sound broad, but the company did manage to get an undisclosed settlement out of NCSoft for City of Heroes in 2010. "Technologies created by Worlds have helped the businesses of virtual worlds gaming and the sale of virtual goods to grow into a multi-billion dollar industry," said Worlds CEO Thom Kidrin. "While we are pleased to see that the gaming industry and its rapidly growing customer base have enthusiastically embraced our patented technologies, we deserve fair compensation for their use." No response yet from Activision Blizzard.