Nvidia, the California based GPU (graphics processing unit) manufacturer, has won the first round in their patent dispute with Samsung, the South Korean electronics powerhouse. Nvidia took legal action just last month when they filed both a lawsuit in the Delaware District Court and a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission. Today, the ITC has revealed that they will continue to investigate Nvidia’s claims that Samsung is using Nvidia’s graphics technology without properly licensing them.
According to documents they’ve released, Nvidia alleges that several Samsung devices, including tablets such as the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro, and Galaxy Tab 2 along with the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 smartphones are using technology that violates their graphics processing patents. Specifically, the complaint claims “Samsung’s Accused Products use processors that incorporate three different types of graphics processing architectures, which are known commercially as Adreno, Mali and PowerVR. Adreno GPUs are used in Qualcomm’s processors and chipsets. Other processors and chipsets used in Samsung’s Accused Products, including Samsung’s Exynos processors, use Mali GPUs or PowerVR GPUs. Products using any of these three types of GPUs infringe on the Asserted Patents.” Ndivia is trying to prevent these devices from bring imported into the United States until this dispute is resolved. David Shannon, the executive VP and Chief Administrative Officer of Nvidia released an official statement in which he says “We are pleased with the ITC decision today to open an investigation and look forward to presenting our case on how NVIDIA GPU patents are being used without a license.”
GPU’s are electronic circuits within the mobile processors found in tablets and smartphones that work to ensure that both graphics and images are processed as fluidly as possible. As previously stated, Samsung products contain either Qualcomm mobile processors or their own Exynos processors. Nvidia is considered a giant in the graphics processing field and is indeed credited with creating the very first GPU in 1999. In recent years, however, the company has branched out from the GPU industry into the mobile gaming and tablet market with the release of their Shield Portable handheld gaming console and Tegra Note 7 tablet, as well as the recently released Nvidia Shield Tablet.