Nvidia files a patent lawsuit against Samsung and Qualcomm

Nvidia has initiated patent lawsuit actions against Samsung and Qualcomm. The issue lies in the GPUs used in Samsung's product, specifically the Qualcomm Adreno, ARM Mali and Imagination PowerVR graphics architectures.

Nvidia has filed its patent infrigement complaints with both the US International Trade Commisssion (ITC) and the US District Court in Delaware. The company wants the ITC to block shipments of the Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets utilizing the aforementioned GPU architectures. Additionally, the GPU maker also insists the Delaware court to award it damages for the patent infringement. Since 1993, Nvidia has spent over $9 billion in research and development and states that its IP strategy is to earn a return for its investment by patent licensing. However, its negotiations with Samsung hit the rock.

With Samsung, NVIDIA’s licensing team negotiated directly with Samsung on a patent portfolio license. We had several meetings where we demonstrated how our patents apply to all of their mobile devices and to all the graphics architectures they use.

We made no progress. Samsung repeatedly said that this was mostly their suppliers' problem.

The company says a total of seven patents are infringed. This is the first time the Nvidia is initiating a patent lawsuit in its 21 years of history. Interestingly, this isn't the first time a company has come out to call Samsung out on not sticking with proper patent licensing. Earlier in August, Microsoft attempted taking Samsung to court for not paying its patent licensing fees on time. A fortnight later, a report surfaced that the two companies have met to resolve their differences.

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