Sued?

[ByteMe]

I see this mentioned a few times. What are the chances of nvidia getting sued for the driver "issues"? It could be by FutureMark, ATI, consumer group, Microsoft, etc. And then if they were sued what grounds legally would it be done under? And then what chance would nvidia have of losing?

Any law people here?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

If it hasn't happened yet, it most likely never will.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The only way I could see some sort of law-suit over driver "cheats", is if nVidia is brazen enough to publish 3DMark scores using non-FutreMark-approved drivers. Then I could see 3DMark launching and winning a law-suit.

Other than that, it's just going to be up to nVidia's customers to vote with their wallets.

 

[Ostsol]

If there were something in 3dMark's terms of use that forbid the writing of drivers meant to artificially inflate scores, then I could see FutureMark suing, but otherwise. . . not likely. Users or NVidia's investors might, making claims of false advertising or saying that NVidia intentionally aimed to mislead consumers and investors.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

If there were something in 3dMark's terms of use that forbid the writing of drivers meant to artificially inflate scores, then I could see FutureMark suing, but otherwise. . . not likely. Users or NVidia's investors might, making claims of false advertising or saying that NVidia intentionally aimed to mislead consumers and investors.

Shouldn't Australia's equivelent of the ACCC take care of such things in America?

 

[Ostsol]

Well, I don't know about the US, but in Canada the Better Business Bureau (BBB) only does anything if there's a sufficient number of complaints. Even then, I'm guessing it depends on the severity and frequency of complaints.

 

[bloodbob]

Killer I very much doubt even though I think our ACCC is actually really good and pro consumer they help support defence when sony sued to get mod chips banned but even they can't take on monoplies telstra completely ignores dates set by the accc and threatend with 10 mil dollar fines but you won't they never got fined and if they did who cares they make billions. If someone ever sued nvidia the court case wouldn't finish with 10 years there would be no jury because it would be considered to technical for a jury anyway.

We can't sue nvidia we can only sue the video card manufactor because we didn't buy the nvidia chip.

 

[Zod]

zero chance. There is no cause of action.

 

[Sxotty]

Well futuremark cannot have a clause that says "No one shall create drivers that cheat", or if they do they cannot win a suit unless as was said Nvidia themselves publish the data from cheating drivers. Otherwise Nvidia can just say "We made the cheat, but never meant for it to be implemented for comparison purposes."

 

[parhelia]

there is no legal ground for action - and trust me, I'm a 3rd year Law student, so I'm no newbie on law

 

[PatrickL]

Depends your country

In my country you have a very legal basis to sue nvidia if you made a game that asks for trilinear for exemple and if the drivers artificially force an other mode. By not letting the application do what is requested and change to what the drivers want you are going against the intellectual rights of the artists and coders in the software. The problem of course is no software company will ever do that

 

[bloodbob]

someone teach him how to code! then he can sue nvidia. Seriously your though thats where things get really iffy because then someone can sue both ati and nvidia if people tick the AF force boxes because you never asked it to apply AF same goes with AA I'm pretty sure it would get thrown out and if it didn't the damages would amount to a few cents.

 

[Quitch]

there is no legal ground for action - and trust me, I'm a 3rd year Law student, so I'm no newbie on law

I have to say that spending less than three years on law (approx) would make you very green indeed... it's just that the rest of us are vibrant green.

 

[WaltC]

The only way I could see some sort of law-suit over driver "cheats", is if nVidia is brazen enough to publish 3DMark scores using non-FutreMark-approved drivers. Then I could see 3DMark launching and winning a law-suit.

Other than that, it's just going to be up to nVidia's customers to vote with their wallets.

Yes, you can sue anyone for any reason... But generally suits are not launched if there is a high probability they'll be thrown out, or that you cannot prove any damages, since you have to pay your lawyers anyway, not to mention court costs, etc. The ability to prove damages relating to a defendant's actions is central to any successful civil litigation.

In this case, I think the fact that nVidia has rejoined the FM program and is now paying the fees it had cited as "ridiculously high" during the period in which it had quit the FM program, pretty much insulates it from damage claims FM might otherwise have been able to show had nVidia continued its policy of public attack on the company and its software and remained aloof from the FM program while maintaining a publicly antagonistic posture. There's little doubt in my mind that if nVidia had continued to publicly browbeat the company in the fashion it engaged in earlier this year that FM would easily have been able to show they'd been financially damaged by nVidia (the question of whether FM would have had the will or the funds to undertake and maintain such a suit to its conclusion is another matter, of course.)

But key here is damages. It would be very difficult to prove that nVidia's manipulation of 3dmk03 in this fashion was directly damaging FM financially, since nVidia is once again a paying member of the program, IMO. As far as FM is concerned, their current policy of accepting nVidia's fees, having nVidia agree to its rules regarding driver detection of the benchmark, and issuing patches regularly to defeat such driver detection strikes me as ideal. It's not "perfect," but it is the closest thing possible for FM to "have its cake and eat it, too" that I can imagine. The only thing better, which would be "perfect," I suppose, would be if nVidia would actually comply with the rules relating to driver detection of the benchmark that FM has laid down and to which nVidia has agreed (as ATi has voluntarily done.) The improvement would be that FM wouldn't have to issue detection-breaking patches going forward. But rarely is life ideal, and the issuing of such patches on a regular basis strikes me as a very small price for FM to pay in order to maintain control of its software.

 

[ByteMe]

I want to sue them because their cards are repressing me.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I want to sue them because their cards are repressing me.

Hmmm....I wonder if'n I could get away with blaming them for my heart attack under mental & emotional duresss. :|

 

[ByteMe]

I want to sue them because their cards are repressing me.

Hmmm....I wonder if'n I could get away with blaming them for my heart attack under mental & emotional duresss. :|

You have no idea what kind of rant I could do on the &^%&^'s at nvidia.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I want to sue them because their cards are repressing me.

Hmmm....I wonder if'n I could get away with blaming them for my heart attack under mental & emotional duresss. :|

You have no idea what kind of rant I could do on the &^%&^'s at nvidia.

PM me a sample, if it's decent I'll interview you about it for EB. 8) (Quinn is gonna love that idea......NOT! )

Since you can't post as a member, I figure the least I can do is give ya a bit of a chance to voice your opinion. (Yeah, I'm still feeling a bit guilty about that...but not too much since I still think it was pretty sweet of the guys. )

 

[antlers]

The only lawsuit I could see is a class action suit by shareholders of NVidia stock who bought after "benchmarks" for NV30 were announced. (For all I know, there is such a lawsuit; these shareholder class actions are really out of hand). If they can show that there was any fraud in anything that made it into NVidia official statements, there might be grounds for a class action in that NVidia fraudulently pumped their share price by lying about the capabilities of their new product. I think that was one of the reasons that NVidia went ballistic on Futuremark when they said NVidia "cheated" and forced them to retract the statement; intentional misrepresentation like that could be grounds for shareholder suits.

 

[WaltC]

The only lawsuit I could see is a class action suit by shareholders of NVidia stock who bought after "benchmarks" for NV30 were announced. (For all I know, there is such a lawsuit; these shareholder class actions are really out of hand). If they can show that there was any fraud in anything that made it into NVidia official statements, there might be grounds for a class action in that NVidia fraudulently pumped their share price by lying about the capabilities of their new product. I think that was one of the reasons that NVidia went ballistic on Futuremark when they said NVidia "cheated" and forced them to retract the statement; intentional misrepresentation like that could be grounds for shareholder suits.

That's a really good point, and serves to illustrate the function of the "rumor mill" in the scheme of things financial. As long as nVidia avoided directly releasing the information (in a press release or on its site, etc.) but handled everything through intermediaries and proxies who would often make statements on their websites never directly attributed to anyone at nVidia, nVidia could maintain a plausible aspect of deniability, should those statements ever receive legal scrutiny. IE, the vast majority of what is said about nVidia and its products does not come directly from nVidia, which was especially true during the pre-nV30-announcement period. And, if stockholders purchase stock on the strength of unofficial rumors and other information which cannot be directly tied to a source in the company, then they do so at their own risk. Rumors often run the stock market, unfortunately (or fortunately, as your perspective may be)...