Nvidia Wins Round One in Lawsuit Against Samsung and Qualcomm

It’s still early days in the lawsuit launched by Nvidia against rival chipmakers Samsung and Qualcomm for infringing on seven of its patents, but the company can now claim its first victory after the International Trade Commission has returned a pretrial claim construction ruling, also known as a Markman ruling.

“We’re very pleased with the outcome of the ruling, in which claim constructions favorable to NVIDIA will be applied to six out of seven disputed claims when the judge considers the question of Samsung’s and Qualcomm’s infringement. This further strengthens the patents we have asserted, and we look forward to a full hearing in late June,” a spokesman for Nvidia said.

This is the first time that Nvidia has started a patent suit in its time and they seem fairly confident in their case. Nvidia claims that the GPUs found in Samsung mobile phones infringe on seven of its patents, no matter whether the GPUs in question are based on ARM’s Mali, Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR, or Qualcomm’s Adreno technology.

Samsung has of course launched a counter suit against Nvidia in Virginia. “We continue to believe Samsung’s claims have no merit, and that Samsung’s effort to sue a small company selling NVIDIA-based products in Virginia is entirely unwarranted,” Nvidia said.

Thanks to Fudzilla for providing us with this information