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  • Kalelovil - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    " which led to NVIDIA taking the especially risky step of filing the suit against both Samsung and one of their GPU suppliers, Qualcomm."

    AFAIK none of Samsung's Exynos chips use Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Am I misreading this sentence?
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    Qualcomm uses Snapdragon SoCs in many of their North American products. So Qualcomm is a supplier.
  • Kalelovil - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    Ah, got it. I read 'GPU supplier' and thought of it in terms of ImgTec or ARM supplying the GPU design for a SoC, while Qualcomm is supplying the whole chip including their GPU.
  • hung2900 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Apple also uses Imagination's GPU, but isn't sued. I smell somthing rotten here.
  • TheJian - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    You go after the big dog once you have a case to use against them. Or, hope apple just settles along with the rest once they see the sticker price in the NV case. Either way, NV will be a winner here and can afford to wait years to get a jury verdict (which for US vs. foreign would go well anyway and looking at the profits, I'd say the same). Apple will likely settle once Samsung gets hit for a few billion. IE see Intel's fees of 1.5B and likely must re-up in 2016 again, and they only infringed once they broke their agreement over chipsets - this is WORSE in samsung's case. Qcom will get stung here too, just a smaller bill probably (and anyone else who makes money putting games on any type of screen using these chips that infringe, or making chips that infringe, or even selling IP that infringes, like IMG.L). I wonder why any of these companies thought NV/AMD wouldn't come after them at some point for stealing their PC tech for mobile...LOL. Silly.
  • shm224 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    Apple is a much greater dog in the US where the lawsuit is filed, so why Samsung / Qualcomm?
    I agree that jury trials are biased against foreign litigants -- as the 2012 Apple-Samsung case has already demonstrated.
  • Yojimbo - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    Samsung makes phones that use Qualcomm GPUs, for instance, the Galaxy Note 4.
  • Morawka - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    good luck samsung, this reeks of desperation.
  • testbug00 - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    What does Samsung have to gain by blowing Nvidia up?
    The only thing I obviously see is stopping the lawsuite Nvidia filed.

    What does NVidia have to gain going after Samsung?
    Loads of cash upfront, potentially huge licensing deals, potential forced SoC wins into Samsung devices, knockout of a potential future GPU competitor. Stopping a large amount of devices from being sold due to the GPU they use. Theoretically, increases sales of their devices.|

    If you can tell me what else Samsung has to gain, I would love to hear it... I cannot take every point of view and find all the gains myself, although, I would love to be able to.
  • Samus - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Man, even Samsung copies how people sue.

    nVidia went after the chip supplier and the hardware vendor, so in turn, Samsung goes after the chip supplier and a (completely unrelated) hardware vendor. Velocity must be thinking WTF?
  • testbug00 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    yes, I think Samsung should have kept it to Nvidia... Leave Qualcomm to sue the manufacturer.
  • shm224 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    @testbug00: and nVidia should have kept it to Qualcomm?
  • shm224 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    @Samus : not sure if nVidia already patented the legal strategy -- I guess nVidia isn't that far behind Apple in this regard -- but as the bible goes, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...
  • HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Samsung wants a better deal when they finally make a deal with nVidia. They're probably hoping to avoid being forced into a SOC deal with nVidia, which the failure to complete is probably the reason nVidia sued them in the first place. nVidia was probably used as the odd man out to compel Qualcomm to offer Samsung better terms on the SOC's that Samsung uses to fill in the gaps in their product line (since Exynos only does the high end and select high end devices at that). When nVidia finally figured out that Samsung never intended to actually go with nVidia (in a strategy of pitting smaller suppliers against larger ones to get better deals on parts not unlike Apple's longterm negotiating tactics), they were very frustrated. Samsung would have been a deal changer for them.

    That Qualcomm got yet another win was the last straw and nVidia decided suing Samsung might compel them to get on board in the way they originally said they would. Except Samsung is not one to be bullied (and neither is nVidia really), so a fight was inevitable.

    If nVidia's true purpose is to compel Samsung to use nVidia SOC's (or at least license Geforce technology into Samsung SOC's), then no settlement will work that doesn't include that. And if that's the case, then these suits will go to court.

    But nVidia suspects as I suspect that in the end it'll be cheaper for Samsung to license Geforce technology and not use it than to fight this in court. Samsung may do it anyway on principle because they don't want to get fleeced by any supplier with a decent set of lawyers.
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Good analysis, but there's definitely at least 3 positive outcomes for Nvidia:

    1) They are paid a licensing fee from Imagination, Qualcomm, Samsung and reduce their licensing fee to ARM and all parties go on in their current IP licensing deals with Nvidia getting an appropriate cut.

    2) They figure they are already paying Imagination or ARM to license IP that is infringing Nvidia IP, so rather than paying multiple times for the same IP, they just license their IP directly from Nvidia.

    3) They just outright purchase Nvidia's SoCs. Given the need for i-LTE in phones, this is probably not going to happen unilaterally, and if anything, Samsung will probably be even less reluctant to just buy Nvidia's SoCs.

    But in the end, Nvidia will have ended up in a far better position than they were before.

    The one big question mark in it all is why was Apple excluded? They currently license IP from Imagination. To me, this strongly hints at the possibility Apple is already in advanced talks with Nvidia to license their IP. Coupled with Jensen Huang's comments in their latest earnings call regarding licensing talks reaching "advanced stages", this wouldn't surprise me at all!
  • Samus - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Samsung doesn't need to use Geforce technology in a cross licensing deal. AMD and nVidia have had cross licensing and portfolio sharing since long before ATI was purchased, and neither company uses much of the others IP. The licensing deal exists simply for stability. Since the terms are not public, who knows how complex the cross license may be and what stipulations there are. It could be things like each company has access to implement the others IP after a certain period...who knows?

    But what is obvious is AMD and nVidia have always had very different architectures, with virtually no cross-over in features other than industry standards...so the licensing deal might be similar to AMD and Intel, who have exclusive access to each others IP for the sake of compatibility in the market, but obviously it takes one or the other quite some time to implement features.

    For example, X86-64 took Intel 2+ years to implement, and it took AMD 3 years to implement SSE4. Who knows how long it will be before AMD implements AVX and other Haswell exclusives.
  • Penti - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link

    AVX and FMA3 is supported since Piledriver. AVX is also supported since Jaguar as well as earlier Bulldozer. Excavator should support AVX2, BMI2 and RDRAND too.
  • testbug00 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    except, I would argue, Samsung would accept the licensing if it was a reasonable rate. Nvidia is suing because in their negotions Samsung failed to license and Qualcomm/Samsung pointed the finger at each other. Also, you're not looking at who fills Samsung's fabs with Apple going to TSMC for 20nm... I'm guessing it is Qualcomm.

    If the license for the technology was at a reasonable industry standard rate and the patents strong, I'm sure that Samsung would have licensed. I would guess at least one of those things is not true. Most likely the license rate Nvidia asked for... Nvidia's pricing is often premium. I wouldn't put it past them to try to have a premium licensing rate only because it makes them more money.

    Best reasonable outcome I can see for Nvidia is that Samsung settles on a industry standard fee. Best absolute case would be Nvidia wins in court and Samsung pays Nvidia's likely premium fee and also has to pay for Nvidia's legal fees.

    Worst case for NVidia is its graphics patents are all invalidated and it has to pay Samsung's legal fees.

    They've already had a bunch of problems... I highly doubt that threatening the company that gives Apple IP (hence, directly threatening Apple) is a smart move.
  • testbug00 - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    Good. Sue the hell out of them.

    While NVidia makes many great products (3D vision plesantly surprised me (and now I use it almost all the time)) their corporate methods of doing things leave a lot to be liked.

    I'm inclined to say that Samsung and Qualcomm are likely more in the right than NVidia in this fight. Granted, I'm sure all three of them have awful dark secrets and probably have accidentally or purposely infringed patents they do not own involving GPUs.
  • krutou - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    "I'm inclined to say that Samsung and Qualcomm are likely more in the right than NVidia in this fight."

    Based on what evidence?
  • dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Personal biases...
  • Samus - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Seriously, wow...if you want to bash nVidia's business practices you need to go back to what they did to 3Dfx (which they were eventually cleared of) which was to devalue 3Dfx during bankrupcy to pickup their patent portfolio and IP for pennies on the dollar.

    As far as I'm concerned, they've been playing ball with ATI/AMD for a decade pretty clean. Each company cross licenses patents and IP and other than nVidia crushing it with Maxwell, things have been competitive and overall good for the consumer. AMD will have their turn in a few months when they release GCN 1.3 (2.0?)
  • dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Umm, wut?
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Hey I was as big a 3Dfx fan as anyone, but to say Nvidia was the direct cause of their downfall is a bit of a stretch. 3Dfx's postmortem can be attributed to overspending (fabs, lavish corporate events) and being late to market on their V4/V5 VX100 chips (which were ultimately uncompetitive even though I loved my Voodoo 5 5500), while Nvidia held to what we have seen them do for a decade since. Iterate and innovate.
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    How could nvidia "devalue 3Dfx during bankruptcy"? Hypnotize all other potential investors?
  • testbug00 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Nvidia's corporate culture in does not appear to be very clean and takes any way possible to make money and raise the stock price.

    Their engineering is top notch, but, I have no respect for the people who decide most policies in Nvidia due to many cases of outright lying to the public, partners, and, crippling consumer chips to save a few dollars.

    I probably should say I don't think Samsung is any better, but, I do think that Qualcomm is. I would still approve this lawsuite as I highly doubt NVidia offered fair licensing terms... They are not a cheap company (which, is what licensing really is) and they demand top dollar above everyone else (and, in the GPU market, their products often deserve it)
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    So I guess you find it's OK for a company to just infringe and profit from your IP without appropriate compensation?

    I'm not sure what you consider fair licensing terms, I'm sure it is easy for Nvidia to say "how much are you paying Imagination and Qualcomm? Just pay us that" while Samsung is just saying "paying you anything is more than what we pay you now" so obviously, they are going to be reluctant.

    Finally, I'm not sure how you think Qualcomm is any better. I mean sure they bought AMD's Adreno mobile group some years back but its more and more apparent no IP or cross-licensing was exchanged there, or Qualcomm would most likely be excluded. More than likely, if forced to testify, Qualcomm is not going to have anything other than "the engineers we hired from AMD knew how to build a GPU" and Imagination is going to say "well we used to make tile-based renderer GPUs but everyone else went to a unified shader pipe, so we just copied them". Those don't really hold up too well in a patent infringement case where you're asked to y'know, produce your relevant patents.

    Patents in question and court filings are clearly laid out here:

    http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/04/nvidia-lau...
  • testbug00 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    I'm sorry, but, until there is discovery and it is made public about internal communications in Samsung/NVidia/Qualcomm/others involved and also discussions between them on licensing, there is nothing to be said.

    What is "appropriate compensation" in whose terms? Nvidia has typically demanded a premium price for everything (good for them and profits/stock-price!) which has served them very well selling products directly to consumers.

    With licensing? I highly doubt they asked for industry standards rates. If they did, Qualcomm probably would have bitten the bullet to make life easier in its dealings with OEMS.

    If the rate was industry standard, Samsung/Qualcomm/etc obviously felt that the patents supporting the case were not strong enough to stand. In which case, said IP that is being "infringed" is not IP that should exist.

    Does my position make sense to you now?

    Anyhow, those are my assumptions, that will change given the discovery is made public and NVidia did not do what I assume they did. Until than, based on the history of the company, I have no reason to assume that they asked for standard rates.
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    What are these cases where they lied to the public and partners? As for "crippling their consumer chips to save a few bucks"? Even if this were true, how is it a shady business practice? But they aren't crippled to save a few bucks, anyway. They are crippled in order to allow market differentiation. If they only made consumer chips they wouldn't design or implement those features in the chips to begin with. And it's nothing unique to nvidia.
  • testbug00 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    http://www.cnet.com/news/summarizing-the-nvidia-pr...

    They changed the material used on the chips that might have saved a few cents per chip. It affected many people. I had to take apart my laptop and lower the votlage by physically messing with the chip (T61 here) to lower its voltage and clocks to solve my problem.

    Than, blame "consumer use cycles" and bullshit like that.

    market differentiation is one thing, this was another. I don't think any chip vendor has had anything to this scale in the last 15-20 years, and, if it was on that scale, it was not to save a few cents per chip (which, does add up, I should note. Making it a great idea if the new solution does not cause problems)
  • Yojimbo - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    Well I don't think you should have called it "crippling consumer chips". Maybe "cheap manufacturing which caused problems" would be more clear, because "crippling" implies intent to harm/reduce the effectiveness of, in my mind. And how did they outright lie to the public and their partners? But this is one case and you said "many cases of..." What are some others?

    Defects happen all the time in manufacturing, and from what I just read, the way NVidia handled the issue seems to be par for the course. They took a ~$250million write-down to cover warranties, replaced the product in their market line-up, and defending themselves from a dozen class-action lawsuits. You're right, though, that chips don't often get mass produced with such significant problems, but it's funny that you limited your comparisons to the last "15-20 years" when the Pentium bug is now just over 20 years old.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    NVIDIA has more GPU patents than any other company, and with good reason. I don't think you could build anything even remotely like a modern GPU without infringing in some way, and whether or not you agree with the patent system, NVIDIA did create much of the underlying framework for GPUs. Samsung basically hasn't done much at all in that area, and it's not like NVIDIA has been going around suing tons of companies. They're good at what they do, plain and simple.
  • ET - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    "it's not like NVIDIA has been going around suing tons of companies"

    Samsung is just the low hanging fruit. If NVIDIA wins there it will go on to demand licensing fees from all other companies on the market using Qualcomm chips.
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    I don't know about low-hanging fruit...maybe the 800lb gorilla in the room. Coming to terms with Samsung, Qualcomm, Imagination and ARM will set the framework for everyone else, so of course it makes the most sense to go after this group first. The one curious exclusion to me however is Apple, which makes no sense at all to me unless

    1) Nvidia didn't want to go after Apple with their fleet of lawyers (Samsung is no easier in this respect however)

    2) Nvidia didn't want to damage their other business with Apple without a settlement from Samung in place first (not that likely since Apple has increasingly retracted from Nvidia in their products).

    3) Nvidia and Apple are already negotiating a licensing agreement, terms pending conclusion of the litigation with Samsung et. al., so they were excluded from this lawsuit.
  • shm224 - Friday, November 14, 2014 - link

    1) but Samsung is a foreign company. nVidia can easily win if they play xenophobia card right -- as Apple lawyers did with Samsung in 2012 (and was warned by the presiding judge). Apple is also a politically well-connected US company.

    2) do you know how much business nVdia is doing with Apple? I'm guessing their licensing revenue can easily dwarf that of graphics card sales to Apple.
  • squngy - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link

    I don't know about recently, but in the past apple was nVidias biggest single customer.
  • Samus - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    They've also been very smart about picking up IP (3Dfx) as well as cross licensing with other GPU architects. ATI/AMD has also been smart about picking up IP (ArtX, Terayon, Cirrus Logic, etc.)

    Meanwhile, Samsung doesn't even pay for licensing let along buying up IP. They battled Microsoft for years to avoid paying licensing to sell Android phones, a license every other OEM pays, and I still don't know if this is resolved.

    This is all VERY different than Apple vs Samsung, which are mostly frivolous design patents. Apple was also unwilling to license, so Samsung was screwed.
  • shm224 - Friday, November 14, 2014 - link

    @Samus : sounds like you don't know much about the Microsoft lawsuit.

    Samsung did pay all their licensing royalty $1+B for the fiscal year 1 (2012) and 2 (2013) -- Microsoft is suing Samsung for the late interest fee, or mere $6.9M. Samsung claims their "business collaboration agreement" (BCA) with Microsoft is essential part of the patent licensing agreement (PLA) and Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia necessarily breaches their BCA and nullifies the whole PLA. Samsung is asking the court to terminate their PLA.
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Have you even bothered reviewing the patents involved? If so you'd see you're wrong here, Samsung, Qualcomm and even Imagination don't have a leg to stand on. The first hearing will ask them to put their relevant patents on the table, and these companies have none.

    That's why Samsung's return salvo is to counter-sue with completely unrelated IP of their own while bringing in one of Nvidia's minor manufacturers into the equation. They are simply trying to mitigate their exposure and prevent any injunction on the import and sale of their products in question in the US.
  • shm224 - Friday, November 14, 2014 - link

    @chizow : Sure, Samsung doesn't have to bring any GPU patents to counter-sue nVidia, that's not a legal requirement. Samsung just needs to prove that nVidia and its partner infringes on their patents.
  • hpglow - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link

    Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't most of these lawsuits based on occlusion culling techniques? Something that was invented with the Power VR series back in the 90s. How did nvidia get a patent on something they didn't invent, or purchase?
  • ET - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    IIRC the NVIDIA patents include putting a transform and lighting engine on the same chip as the rasterisation. On the face of it that's a stupid patent, but the details would determine whether other companies are actually infringing this and whether it should be struck down for being obvious. After all, you can't patent just the idea of putting these together, it's the exact method which matters.
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    The exact patents in question are outlined here: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/04/nvidia-lau...

    Imagination's defense of "we used to make a popular tile-based rendering GPU in the early 2000s but switched to a unified shader pipeline recently because everyone else did" probably isn't going to hold up well in court.
  • name99 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Well since Imagination IS NOT BEING SUED, it doesn't really matter what their defense is...

    How about we deal with the lawsuit that's ACTUALLY happening, rather than wandering off into some strange legal-fan-fiction world where nVidia sues Apple, Imagination and every other entity on your corporate hate list?
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    They are not directly being sued but Samsung and Qualcomm license their IP in building their SoCs. Going after the OEM necessarily includes the disputed IP from their vendors, Imagination and ARM, so winning against the OEM means they win against ARM and Imagination. As Samsung dismissively stated, they see it as a "supplier issue" and nothing more.

    From the Nvidia brief:

    "We are asking the ITC to block shipments of Samsung Galaxy mobile phones and tablets containing Qualcomm’s Adreno, ARM’s Mali or Imagination’s PowerVR graphics architectures. We are also asking the Delaware court to award damages to us for the infringement of our patents. - See more at: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/04/nvidia-lau...
  • name99 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Samsung can spin it however they like, but Imagination is not being sued here. Plain and simple.
    If I sue Apple, I am not suing TSMC, regardless of the fact that TSMC is an Apple supplier.

    "NVIDIA CORPORATION, a Delaware corporation,
    IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE
    Plaintiff,

    v.

    SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., a South Korea corporation; SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC., a New York corporation; SAMSUNG TELECOMMUNICATIONS AMERICA, LLC, a limited liability Delaware corporation; SAMSUNG SEMICONDUCTOR, INC., a California corporation; and QUALCOMM INC., a Delaware corporation,
    Defendants."
    ...
    "This civil action arises from Defendants’ manufacture, use, sale or offers for sale
    within the United States or importation into the United States of products such as smart phones and tablet computers that infringe patents owned by NVIDIA."

    nV presumably reserve the right to sue Imagination or anyone they like for any reason they like at any time in the future, but right here and right now they are suing Qualcomm and they are suing Samsung, that is all.

    They DO make a big deal in the suit about how they (nV) have done so much work in GPU research, while QC and Samsung have done fsckall. ("Qualcomm and Samsung are not GPU pioneers nor are they innovators in graphics technology") If that is a large part of their argument, then it would suggest they're less interested in suing Imagination and the Mali part of ARM precisely because they can't make that same argument.

    The fact that Imagination is listed in the qualifier for which phones nV wants blocked does not mean that Imagination is at fault. For example the specific point(s) on which nV wants to sue Samsung may relate to some aspect of how Samsung is integrating the Imagination cell into an Exynos, rather than the cell itself --- for example if I sued Apple based on how they packaged their TSMC part onto the iPhone PCB.
  • chizow - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Again, you are failing to acknowledge the fact the IP of their suppliers is integral to the case Nvidia filed. The only reason Nvidia just went after the OEMs is because that automatically gets everyone involved into the courtroom, as both Samsung and Qualcomm are going to call on their IP vendors to provide proof the IP they are licensing is backed by their own patents. Once they have shown they can't do this and don't have the patents to back their licensed IP, Samsung can then go after them for part of the damages and licenses they will be forced to pay Nvidia by court order.

    As you can see again, from the Nvidia filing:

    "We are now seeking the courts’ judgment to confirm the validity, infringement and value of our patents so that we can reach agreement with Samsung and its graphics suppliers. - See more at: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/09/04/nvidia-lau...

    They are going after all of them, and as I already listed, they specifically named each graphics IP supplier.
  • frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    you are both right and wrong:
    - there are 2 different legal actions:
    * one is patent infringement in Delaware, targeting Samsung and Qualcom
    * the other is with the ITC to block import of products, targeting Samsung and ALL their graphics suppliers (Qualcom for Snapdragons, ARM and PowerVR for Samsung's own chips)

    So, Samsung conter-sued in Federal Court (IP problem) in Virginia.
  • fm123 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    “method for rolling a metal strip” is listed as patent 6282938, but that is the wrong patent listed on the legal filing (embarrasing). The correct patent is 6262938, as noted further in the filing.
  • yannigr2 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    The fact that Samsung is suing Nvidia for different patents, means that they believe that Nvidia will eventually win the case for the gpu.

    I see an outcome in favor of Nvidia, with both companies coming to a cross-license patent agreement and Samsung also agreeing to license Maxwell architecture, or whatever tech Nvidia is selling when they come to that agreement, over other gpu techs.

    Nvidia is trying desperately for years to create a proprietary ecosystem where everyone will be paying them for their gpus and any competitor in the gpu business will have a huge disadvantage, being unable to offer proprietary technologies like GSync, PhysX, CUDA, Gameworks etc.

    Nvidia was always greedy and unfortunately it seems that they are winning. We are moving to a very ugly monopoly in gpus in a few years from now.
  • HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    nVidia: "Eh, we'll sue you, Samsung. And we'll sue one of your high profile partners that you chose over us, too. That'll put some uncertainty around TWO targets we don't particularly like and make you more likely to work with us instead of Qualcomm."

    Samsung: "After long and careful consideration, we decline the option of working with you. Instead, we'll sue you and one of YOUR partners. Now explain why we included them like we had to explain to Qualcomm why you sued them. See you in court."

    nVidia: "Grrrrr. Argh. Let's talk about this."

    Samsung: "Talk about... what?"
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    I am pretty sure NVidia took a close look at the potential to be counter-sued before going ahead with filing a lawsuit, as counter-suing is a very common tactic. The counter-suit brought by Samsung, if valid, seems to cover their shield portable and/or tablet device, which accounts for a very small percentage of their revenue. Financial damages from that would seem to be extremely small compared to the financial damages in question if NVidia's suit is upheld. In other words, I think your fan-fiction dialog is way off.
  • frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    Truth is Nvidia would prefer to Sue Qualcomm directly, but our IP licensing system is so complicated, that there is no consensus on *WHO* should pay for such a license, the chip manufacturer or the final device manufacturer (or any integrator in between).

    Similar questions were raised (and left unsolved) during legal proceeding between Samsung and Apple or Motorola/Google and Microsoft.

    There probably was a game of "pass the buck" between all the suppliers, with none willing to pay. The court system is exactly where it should be resolved.

    I have no idea *HOW* it will end, but getting a definite pinning of responsibilities would be neat either way.
  • quasimodo123 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    This is the problem -- Nvidia didn't invent GPUs, and number of patents does not equal quality or inventiveness. Not everything deserves strong patent protection.

    http://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/nvidia-files-com...
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link

    That post doesn't tell us much. It's just a seemingly off-the-cuff opinion of one person with a completely unknown background. It doesn't even quote the actual patents so that we can make our own uninformed judgments, or at least compare the wording of the patents to what the author claims.
  • quasimodo123 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    You can look the patents up on Google with 30 seconds of effort. Your posts suggest that you believe lawsuits are only brought when a company is certain it will win. That is not remotely the historical experience of patent litigation. I posted the link because I thought the angles of attack were interesting and reasonable, and were evidently not put forward by a rank amateur. My own reading of the patents suggests that these are strong defenses. Nvidia has indirectly brought an action against ARM and Imagination (who would customarily indemnify Samsung and are likely to show up in court) and directly against Qualcomm. All three of these companies are primarily in the business of IP licensing, and are likely to have developed products that can resist an IP challenge. Why don't you pause to consider why Simon Segars is confident that Mali will survive this challenge, rather than side with a company that has belatedly decided to egregiously rent-seek in the mobile market that it has had precious little success in otherwise?
  • Yojimbo - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    I'm not siding with anyone, you are. I am just refuting your confident dismissal of the case. The reader of that article could look up the patents, but that doesn't excuse the author from putting that information there. Unless the texts are exceedingly long it's a bit rude not to. It's also useful in being able to determine if the author is referring to the whole thing or just part of it.

    What does it mean if Simon Segars says he's confident Mali will survive the challenge? If the lawsuit is thrown out, Mali will survive the challenge. If ARM enters into a license agreement with NVidia, Mali will survive the challenge. And if ARM later chooses to discontinue Mali and use another line of GPUs, Simon Segars will quietly call it a strategic move.
  • Vinny DePaul - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link

    Samsung should be ashamed to drag a small American company in the battles between two giants.
  • misuspita - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link

    Yeah, I'm sure they are right now in the church saying 3 Ave Maria's asking for forgiveness...

    It's a war that could potentially cost Samsung billions of dollars, so I am sure they don't give a flying f**k about another company, be it american or not. They use all and every move legally usable.

    Oh, and be sure it's not Samsung that should be ashamed, but the legal team who brought the ideea to sue a small company to get the lawsuit in a "friendly" court. Which legal team I'm sure it's all proud red white and blue 'muricans...

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