The US ITC (United States International Trade Agency) will start investigating Nvidia after Samsung filed complaints last month stating that the US-based GPU giant has infringed upon some of its patents covering graphics chip technology. Samsung's complaint was a response to an earlier decision by the same court after a complaint by Nvidia against Samsung. These ITC complaints came after both the companies sued each other in federal district courts in Delaware and Virginia. David Shannon, chief administrative officer at Nvidia said, “This is typical legal ping pong.” Legal battles of these kinds are often fought and decided district courts, but filing a second complaint with ITC has turned out to be a favorite choice amongst firms these days. ITC can move faster than other civil courts courts and if it finds the other party guilty, it bans the import of infringing products into the US. “Nvidia remains focused on ensuring that we receive fair compensation from Samsung for using our technology in Galaxy phones and tablets,” Shannon said.
Earlier this year, Nvidia had filed lawsuits against Samsung and Qualcomm following an alleged infringement of seven patents related graphics chips such as unified shading, programmable shading, multithreaded processing on GPU, and the entire idea behind a standalone GPU, among others. Samsung is also working on its own of mobile GPU design, which will be used in its homegrown Exynos SoC for mobile devices.
