Samsung recently came under fire for allegedly violating Nvidia’s patents, but the two companies have actually been duking it out for quite some time.
We recently reported that Samsung received a favorable ruling in a patent dispute against graphics firm Nvidia. This most recent patent case is just one in a series of lawsuits that have turned the Korean tech company into a seasoned veteran of intellectual property clashes.
The most recent case against brought forward by Nvidia illustrates the sheer might of a company as big as Samsung. According to a Reuters report, a judge from the International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Samsung, writing that the company had not violated two of the patents for Nvidia’s graphics technologies.
Samsung did infringe on a third patent, but Judge Thomas Pender ruled that the patent was invalid because another company had already filed a patent for the same technology.
While Nvidia spokespeople are confident that the case will move forward in their favor, Judge Pender’s decision suggests that the smaller company’s strategy of aggressive litigation in an attempt to block US shipments of various Samsung products may blow up in their faces.
The company claims to have invented the first graphics processing chip in 1999, and accused Samsung and partner Qualcomm for using its patents without Nvidia’s permission or compensation. The processors in question were the Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm and the Exynos processors included in several Samsung tablets and smartphones.
Samsung and Nvidia’s history goes back further than this recent lawsuit. In November of 2014, Samsung slapped Nvidia with a patent case of their own. The Korean giant accused Nvidia Corporation of stealing several chip related patents and issuing false claims about their products.
Samsung sought damages for infringement on patents including proprietary technology that determines how semiconductors buffer and use data. The company also accused Nvidia of falsely advertising its “Shield” tablet as containing the world’s fastest processor, the Tegra. Samsung claims that studies carried out by researchers at Primate Labs discovered this technology first.
Nvidia is one of the main competitors of Qualcomm, the processor company associated with Samsung. The two companies have been firing at each other over the use of processor patents for years. The November 2014 lawsuit on Samsung’s behalf was in retaliation to an earlier lawsuit filed by Nvidia against Samsung in September of 2014.
