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Nvidia Sues Qualcomm And Samsung For Infringing On Its GPU Patents

By - Source: Nvidia | B 39 comments

The patent wars are far from over, but this time a patent lawsuit isn’t coming from the usual suspects in the mobile market, but from Nvidia, which is suing both Qualcomm and Samsung over alleged infringement on seven of its graphics patents.

A year ago, Nvidia announced its Kepler licensing program, which many thought was the company’s plan to put its GPU technology in other chips in order to make Nvidia even more ubiquitous in the market. However, it now appears that it may have been Nvidia’s plan to get other GPU IP designers like Qualcomm, ARM and Imagination to pay royalties for its Kepler patents.

Nvidia asserts that Qualcomm is infringing on its GPU IP, and therefore both Qualcomm and Samsung, (which uses Qualcomm’s chips) must pay it a royalty. Nvidia even went to Samsung to cut a deal, but apparently Samsung didn’t want to hear anything about it, so it rejected any agreement between the two, saying this is mostly the suppliers’ problem.

“Without licensing Nvidia’s patented GPU technology, Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to deploy our IP without proper compensation to us. This is inconsistent with our strategy to earn an appropriate return on our investment. 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,” reads the Nvidia post.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4Samsung Galaxy Note 4

Nvidia has already asked the ITC to block some of Samsung’s shipments to the U.S., that include devices such as the recently-announced Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge, as well as the Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4 and tablets such as the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Tab 2 and Galaxy Note Pro. Nvidia has also asked the Delaware Court to award it damages.

Nvidia claims these are the kind of patented technologies Samsung and Qualcomm infringed on:

"Those patents include our foundational invention, the GPU, which puts onto a single chip all the functions necessary to process graphics and light up screens; our invention of programmable shading, which allows non-experts to program sophisticated graphics; our invention of unified shaders, which allow every processing unit in the GPU to be used for different purposes; and our invention of multithreaded parallel processing in GPUs, which enables processing to occur concurrently on separate threads while accessing the same memory and other resources."

Whether those claims are true or not, it is important to remember that a few years ago Nvidia also scored a big $1.5 billion win against Intel in another major licensing agreement, after years of Intel disputing the patent claims.

This time, Nvidia has also carefully chosen only seven patents out of over 7,000 that it has either issued or has pending, so the company must believe it has a strong case against Qualcomm and Samsung. Ultimately, it’s up to the Courts to decide the validity of those patents and if Nvidia is in the right or not.

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Top Comments
  • 10 Hide
    InvalidError , September 5, 2014 7:56 AM
    Looks like Nvidia's frustration with failing to earn the market shares they hoped for with Tegra just entered the next stage: suing the competition for royalties.

    At a glance, most of those patents should never have been granted in the first place since they have tons of prior art in CPUs, older GPUs from before programmable shaders, obvious/natural technological progress, etc.

    None of the summaries from Nvidia's patent struck me as genuinely original.
Other Comments
  • -3 Hide
    irish_adam , September 5, 2014 7:48 AM
    Surely Nvidea aren't saying that they invented the GPU and hold the patents for it. If that was the case then surley every chip maker would have to pay it royalties including Intel and AMD
  • 5 Hide
    IInuyasha74 , September 5, 2014 7:52 AM
    This is crazy. Nvidia is just trying to get money for nothing. All those features mentioned have been around for close to a decade now in both ATI/AMD, Nvidia, and even Intel graphics.
    Qualcomm directly purchased its graphics technology from AMD many years ago and have ran with it advancing the design greatly. Nvidia is crazy.
  • Add your comment Display all 39 comments.
  • 2 Hide
    chicofehr , September 5, 2014 7:52 AM
    I would love to put the lawyers into a ring and get them to fight each other over the patents. Put the ring into a court room and get them throwing punches. I would pay to see that.
  • 10 Hide
    InvalidError , September 5, 2014 7:56 AM
    Looks like Nvidia's frustration with failing to earn the market shares they hoped for with Tegra just entered the next stage: suing the competition for royalties.

    At a glance, most of those patents should never have been granted in the first place since they have tons of prior art in CPUs, older GPUs from before programmable shaders, obvious/natural technological progress, etc.

    None of the summaries from Nvidia's patent struck me as genuinely original.
  • 6 Hide
    icemunk , September 5, 2014 8:11 AM
    Corporate extortion.
  • 5 Hide
    silverblue , September 5, 2014 8:11 AM
    And... how is this Samsung's issue? It's like one car company complaining about another for launching a very similar product... and suing the customers instead.

    Maybe NVIDIA have realised that they need other revenue streams, no matter how dubious.
  • 4 Hide
    iknowhowtofixit , September 5, 2014 8:18 AM
    nVidia is going to piss off all of their potential customers then wonder why they aren't getting design wins...
  • 4 Hide
    dovah-chan , September 5, 2014 8:49 AM
    I could see them getting upset about Qualcomm using proprietary GPU components derived from Kepler but the features they listed are the definition of a GPU. Kind of silly if you ask me.
  • 3 Hide
    jeremy2020 , September 5, 2014 8:52 AM
    I use nvidia GPUs. I tried switching to AMD, but went back to Nvidia. This is the type of stunt to get me to try AMD again.
  • 4 Hide
    Miharu , September 5, 2014 9:01 AM
    Why they sue Samsung? For using Qualcomm’s chips? I do not understand it at all. If your provider chip use illegal IP, you cannot be sue for that! It's like sue every single people who use those chips that currently aren't prove to infringe anything. If this go on... I lost faith in humanity.

    Also if you check that from a mobile Platform point of view, they target the big part of the market that they try to get. It's really bad.
  • 1 Hide
    soccerplayer88 , September 5, 2014 9:26 AM
    Quote:
    I use nvidia GPUs. I tried switching to AMD, but went back to Nvidia. This is the type of stunt to get me to try AMD again.


    So you'll go back to the other company even though you didn't like them all because the current vendor you're with has some shady business practices even though you like their products more.

    Wait what? This is the first time NVIDIA (as a company) has ever filed a patent lawsuit. NVIDIA tried to negotiate with Samsung, Samsung told them to f*** off. So NVIDIA went to court.

    The only thing that should raise eyebrows is that NVIDIA let this sit for two years before the injunction. That I believe only NVIDIA can answer.

    AnandTech had an interesting read on the subject. They believe their going after Samsung because their the largest supplier in the US and Qualcomm being the largest SoC. It makes sense to start at the top.
  • 0 Hide
    sonofliberty08 , September 5, 2014 9:29 AM
    Samsung had their own ARM chips as well
  • -1 Hide
    xPandaPanda , September 5, 2014 9:45 AM
    What do you people mean "why sue Samsung?" Samsung has a long history of copying and infringing upon other companies. And apparently, they are okay with it because they are still making profit. So I guess it's part of their business model? They were the ones that signed off on it because they have a lot of R&D to get the GPU on their SoC.
    I don't like the way patents are used, but if nVidia is claiming what they are, then they clearly have the upperhand. Also, Samsung is not a company that seeks innovation. They are a more of a business and they declined negotiations. I'd like to see the royalties help nVidia make better technologies. However, the price-gouging of their products is a different beast...
  • 5 Hide
    iknowhowtofixit , September 5, 2014 10:43 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    I use nvidia GPUs. I tried switching to AMD, but went back to Nvidia. This is the type of stunt to get me to try AMD again.


    So you'll go back to the other company even though you didn't like them all because the current vendor you're with has some shady business practices even though you like their products more.

    Wait what? This is the first time NVIDIA (as a company) has ever filed a patent lawsuit. NVIDIA tried to negotiate with Samsung, Samsung told them to f*** off. So NVIDIA went to court.

    The only thing that should raise eyebrows is that NVIDIA let this sit for two years before the injunction. That I believe only NVIDIA can answer.

    AnandTech had an interesting read on the subject. They believe their going after Samsung because their the largest supplier in the US and Qualcomm being the largest SoC. It makes sense to start at the top.


    Have you considered that Nvidia's outrageous terms were the reason that Samsung told them to "f*** off'? Nvidia's proposal had an insane up front fee and a multiple times more than industry standard royalty associated with individual product sales.
  • 2 Hide
    InvalidError , September 5, 2014 10:45 AM
    Quote:
    Samsung had their own ARM chips as well

    While Samsung makes the chips in their their fabs, they actually license the CPU and GPU as IP cores straight from ARM.

    Nvidia should be suing ARM since Samsung and other companies using Mali IGPs did not actually design the IGP in their chips and ARM is licensing the same infringing GPUs to everyone who wants to use them.
  • 1 Hide
    ZolaIII , September 5, 2014 11:27 AM
    It's becoming fashion to sue Qualcomm.
    They can't do anything to Samsung for using Qualcomm SoCs in their products, that part is actually funny. I certainly won't cry for Qualcomm.
  • 2 Hide
    IInuyasha74 , September 5, 2014 11:57 AM
    Glad to see most people at least understand Nvidia is nuts to try this. It probably is because the Tegra SoCs just simply aren't winning any battles in the mobile world. I'm hoping this comes back to bite Nvidia fairly hard, like getting the patents in question revoked despite the time they put into bribing officials to issue the patents in the first place.

    Next they will be trying to patent stuff like the tablet, or the home computer.
  • 2 Hide
    iknowhowtofixit , September 5, 2014 12:05 PM
    Quote:
    Glad to see most people at least understand Nvidia is nuts to try this. It probably is because the Tegra SoCs just simply aren't winning any battles in the mobile world. I'm hoping this comes back to bite Nvidia fairly hard, like getting the patents in question revoked despite the time they put into bribing officials to issue the patents in the first place.

    Next they will be trying to patent stuff like the tablet, or the home computer.


    Or "rectangular devices with rounded corners"...

    P.S. - That one has been done already ;-)
  • 1 Hide
    nismo303 , September 5, 2014 12:11 PM
    They are going after Samsung because Samsung is the largest manufacture of non iPhone mobile devices. 60% of Androids are Samsungs.

    If Qualcomm copped NVidia's Kepler architecture to replace previous Adreno architecture previous to Andreno 330, Qualcomm should definitely pay up.

    What also makes this interesting, and shows NVidia isn't just patent trolling, is that the case is NOT being held in Texas, where they let you sue for anything without worry.
  • 1 Hide
    IInuyasha74 , September 5, 2014 3:37 PM
    Quote:
    They are going after Samsung because Samsung is the largest manufacture of non iPhone mobile devices. 60% of Androids are Samsungs.

    If Qualcomm copped NVidia's Kepler architecture to replace previous Adreno architecture previous to Andreno 330, Qualcomm should definitely pay up.

    What also makes this interesting, and shows NVidia isn't just patent trolling, is that the case is NOT being held in Texas, where they let you sue for anything without worry.


    Qualcomm didn't take anything from Nvidia. Adreno graphics are directly based on the old AMD mobile graphics which they bought years ago.
    Kepler, while very effective for desktops, has proven to consume too much power for smartphones. Why do you think the Nvidia Shield is so big? its to help cool the GPU inside of it. Not to mention if it was Kepler tech, they would of directly said that and would have a lot more proof than arbitrarily suing for every part of a GPU.
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