NVIDIA Files Complaints Against Samsung and Qualcomm for Infringing Its GPU Patents

NVIDIA Files Complaints Against Samsung and Qualcomm for Infringing Its GPU Patents

Complaints Filed in ITC, District Court Focus on GPU Technology Patents for Mobile Processors Used in Samsung Galaxy Phones and Tablets

NVIDIA today announced that it has filed complaints against Samsung and Qualcomm at the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleging that the companies are both infringing NVIDIA GPU patents covering technology including programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing

The identified Samsung products include the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 mobile phones; and the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab 2 computer tablets. Most of these devices incorporate Qualcomm mobile processors -- including the Snapdragon S4, 400, 600, 800, 801 and 805. Others are powered by Samsung Exynos mobile chips, which incorporate ARM's Mali and Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GPU cores.

NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said: "As the world leader in visual computing, NVIDIA has invented technologies that are vital to mobile computing. We have the richest portfolio of computer graphics IP in the world, with 7,000 patents granted and pending, produced by the industry's best graphics engineers and backed by more than $9 billion in R&D.

"Our patented GPU inventions provide significant value to mobile devices. Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to use these in their products without a license from us. We are asking the courts to determine infringement of NVIDIA's GPU patents by all graphics architectures used in Samsung's mobile products and to establish their licensing value."

A pioneer in computer graphics, NVIDIA invented the GPU. The graphics processing unit enables computers to generate and display images. It brings to life the beautiful graphics that shape how people enjoy their mobile devices and is fundamental to the rise of mobile computing. NVIDIA GPUs are some of the most complex processors ever created, requiring over a thousand engineering-years to create and containing more than 7 billion transistors.

Conference Call Information

NVIDIA senior executives will conduct a conference call with analysts and investors to discuss this announcement today at 2 p.m. Pacific Time (5 p.m. Eastern Time). To listen to the conference call, dial (800) 741-8620; no password is required. A live webcast (listen-only mode) of the conference call will be accessible at the NVIDIA investor relations website http://investor.nvidia.com/ and at www.streetevents.com. Due to anticipated heavy call traffic, please plan on dialing in up to 10 minutes ahead of time.
http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/News/N...lcomm-for-Infringing-Its-GPU-Patents-bb4.aspx
 
Always nice to see that when you can't compete with technology, just sue the competition.

Why aren't they also suing Imagination Technologies which provides the graphics technology for Samsungs mobile chips (which is why they are being sued) as well as other competitors? That would actually make some sense. But since they aren't, it becomes more obvious that it's not about the technology infringement as it is about trying to get your competitors out of the way via the courtroom when you can't beat them through your products.

Likewise with not suing the various other mobile chip makers that use Imagination Technologies GPU cores.

Regards,
SB
 
Always nice to see that when you can't compete with technology, just sue the competition.

Why aren't they also suing Imagination Technologies which provides the graphics technology for Samsungs mobile chips (which is why they are being sued) as well as other competitors? That would actually make some sense. But since they aren't, it becomes more obvious that it's not about the technology infringement as it is about trying to get your competitors out of the way via the courtroom when you can't beat them through your products.

Likewise with not suing the various other mobile chip makers that use Imagination Technologies GPU cores.

Regards,
SB


Qualcomm in particular makes large amounts of revenue from IP licensing. I bet Nvidia pays Qualcomm for every Icera modem it ships. Seems fair for Qualcomm to return the favor.
 
Always nice to see that when you can't compete with technology, just sue the competition.

That is not the reason. The reason is clearly stated as:

"Our patented GPU inventions provide significant value to mobile devices. Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to use these in their products without a license from us."

also

Nvidia said in the complaint that it’s tried since August 2012 without luck to reach a licensing agreement with Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung, the world’s biggest maker of smartphones.

and

“Samsung has negotiated based on delay and by pointing the infringement finger at its chipset suppliers, such as Qualcomm, or third parties that supply GPU technology to Samsung

Silent_Buddha said:
Why aren't they also suing Imagination Technologies which provides the graphics technology for Samsungs mobile chips (which is why they are being sued) as well as other competitors?

That would actually make some sense. But since they aren't, it becomes more obvious that it's not about the technology infringement as it is about trying to get your competitors out of the way via the courtroom when you can't beat them through your products.

Likewise with not suing the various other mobile chip makers that use Imagination Technologies GPU cores.

Incorrect conclusion(s):

Nvidia is in productive discussions with other companies, Huang said. He declined to identify them or say whether he intends to extend legal action to include other companies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...-sales-in-fight-with-qualcomm.html?cmpid=yhoo
 
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... it becomes more obvious that it's not about the technology infringement as it is about trying to get your competitors out of the way via the courtroom when you can't beat them through your products.

In this quote:

We are asking the courts to determine infringement of NVIDIA's GPU patents by all graphics architectures used in Samsung's mobile products and to establish their licensing value."
I don't see "get your competitors out of the way" but "get fair value for use of our patents".
 
Why aren't they also suing Imagination Technologies which provides the graphics technology for Samsungs mobile chips (which is why they are being sued) as well as other competitors?

This is what NVIDIA said on their blog:

"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."

"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."

"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."

Anyway, this is pretty huge and unexpected news.
 
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So they decided to force everyone to pay, since noone is buying Kepler IPs? They target few devices yet they can extend their claim to every other device since they simply say "we invented programmable / unified shader / lightining / rasterization system, now pay for it". I didnt study all patents, yet some parts of them are based on "too much generalization" and results to interpret like "there is no way to build a GPU module that does this job without infringing the original one"(like many patents ).

I dont know how the patent courts process the "too generalized yet approved" ones, but feels may be streched too much tho.
 
I don't know how the patent courts process the "too generalized yet approved" ones, but feels may be streched too much tho.

Have you read any of the seven patents?
They are not "too generalized"

The exact patents Nvidia has named in its lawsuits are the following:

  • US Patent No. 6,198,488, "Transform, lighting and rasterization system embodied on a single semiconductor platform"

  • US Patent No. 6,992,667, "Single semiconductor graphics platform system and method with skinning, swizzling and masking capabilities"


  • US Patent No. 7,015,913, "Method and apparatus for multithreaded processing of data in a programmable graphics processor"


  • US Patent No. 7,209,140, "System, method and article of manufacture for a programmable vertex processing model with instruction set"

 
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Samsung is also a potential customer with their phones.

Has NV decided they can't win Samsung's business anyways?
 
I wish them luck convincing a judge that "unified shaders" is some sort of novel idea. Patent litigation is stupid in general. It's doubly stupid when the "inventions" aren't inventions at all.
There was a time when somebody came up with a truly wonderful invention: the interval timer for windshield wipers. It was the greatest thing ever and totally, rightfully, patentable, even if today it sounds trivial. There were lawsuits about it, won by the patent holder.

I don't know the history of unified shaders, and I don't like offensive patent litigation, but if you think that they were not, at some point, a significant, patentable invention, you're very, very wrong.
 
An efficient, working implementation of unified shaders was a significant development. The "idea" of a unified shader is not. The first CPU that could do basic floating point arithmetic already covered that.

Is nVidia alleging these companies infringed on their specific designs or just on the high level concept? Just because someone thinks flying cars would be cool it doesn't mean someone else shouldn't be allowed to design a flying car.
 
Is nVidia alleging these companies infringed on their specific designs or just on the high level concept? Just because someone thinks flying cars would be cool it doesn't mean someone else shouldn't be allowed to design a flying car.

A patent does not give a right to make or use or sell an invention.[13] Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others[13] from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date[4] subject to the payment of maintenance fees. A patent is a limited property right the government gives inventors in exchange for their agreement to share details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent
 
Samsung is also a potential customer with their phones.

Has NV decided they can't win Samsung's business anyways?

Samsung only used the Tegra2 when they did not have an internal SOC to use. When they developed their own they had no need for any other SOC producer other than QualComm.

I wonder if they will come to regret their decision not to license the patents (along with their finger pointing at QualComm).
 
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I dont know how the patent courts process the "too generalized yet approved" ones, but feels may be streched too much tho.
I wish them luck convincing a judge that "unified shaders" is some sort of novel idea. Patent litigation is stupid in general. It's doubly stupid when the "inventions" aren't inventions at all.
rectangles with round corners, side to unlock or MS getting licence from each android device anyone ?
 
Always nice to see that when you can't compete with technology, just sue the competition.
This is exactly the opposite. Nvidia is by far the biggest patent holder in graphics with more than 7000 patents. They spent 9 billions in R&D since their beginning. They are the biggest innovator in GPU.
If their competitors don't want to licence their tech, they can't use it freely.
 
An efficient, working implementation of unified shaders was a significant development. The "idea" of a unified shader is not. The first CPU that could do basic floating point arithmetic already covered that.
There's another problem with your understanding of patents: even if a general concept already exists as prior art, you can still patent specific applications of that idea. Whether or not is a significant development doesn't matter. (I do think it was a major step forward, FWIW.)

There is a funny story about that in 'Surely, you're joking Mr. Feynman', where, after the WW2, he was contacted for a job as VP or director at some large company that makes submarines: turns out that, with the development of the atomic bomb, he had been part of a brainstorm session about potential uses of atomic power, and US government had then filed patents on them. Nuclear submarines was one of them, and with his name on the patent, the company had contacted him.

The fact that the concept of unified shaders in various forms on a CPU already exists, doesn't mean that running them on a GPU isn't an additional innovation that can't be patented.

Is nVidia alleging these companies infringed on their specific designs or just on the high level concept? Just because someone thinks flying cars would be cool it doesn't mean someone else shouldn't be allowed to design a flying car.
It is perfectly possible to patent designs that haven't been implemented yet. For something to be patentable, it must have been reduced to practice. You'd think that this makes flying cars unpatentable? Wrong. The very act of writing down certain implementation details as a patent counts as a "constructive reduction to practice" (as opposed to "actual reduction to practice".)
 
If their competitors don't want to licence their tech, they can't use it freely.
The NV defense force is mighty strong in this thread. :rolleyes:

NO, just because they have a patent for something doesn't mean it's "their tech". A huge number of tech patents are obvious, bullshit or both (as anyone would discover by regularly reading web publications such as Ars Technica and others), and granted solely because of (well-known, and sometimes actually exploited) deficiencies in the US patent system.

A unified shader is a perfect example of something which is inherently NOT PATENTABLE, because it's an obvious development for any person knowledgeable in the field of graphics, and besides is already covered by the existence of software rasterizers. Arguing that a 3D rasterizer implemented as specialized hardware makes unified shaders worthy of patent protection makes the idea no less obvious, whilst making it abstract, again disqualifying it as worthy of protection.
 
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