The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) will investigate the patent infringement complaint filed by graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Nvidia against Qualcomm and Samsung.
The ITC will examine whether Nvidia's allegations that several Samsung products infringe upon Nvidia's GPU patents hold merit and whether the devices in question should be banned from being sold in the United States.
"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," says Nvidia executive vice president and chief administrative officer David Shannon in a statement.
At the heart of the complaint is Nvidia's request to block the sale of five of Samsung's most expensive smartphones, namely the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4. Nvidia is also requesting the sales ban on three tablets, the Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note Pro and Galaxy Tab 2. These devices are powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile processors with Adreno graphics architecture and Samsung's own Exynos processors equipped with ARM's Mali technology and Imagination's PowerVR graphics cards.
Last month, Nvidia filed a complaint with the ITC and the U.S. District Court in Delaware alleging that Samsung refused to pay licensing fees after holding multiple discussions where Nvidia "demonstrated how our patents apply to all of their mobile devices." In a blog post written by Shannon, he says Samsung dismissed Nvidia's allegations and directed the company to Qualcomm, which supplies its processors.
"Without licensing Nvidia's patented GPU technology, Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to deploy our IP (intellectual property) without proper compensation to us," Shannon says. "This is inconsistent with our strategy to earn an appropriate return on our investment."
Shannon says Nvidia spent $9 billion in research and development since 1993, when it began developing its graphics card technology. The complaint involves seven patents, including the patent for GPU technology itself, as well as patents for programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing.
If the ITC investigation finds enough evidence for a lawsuit and the agency finds Samsung and Qualcomm to have infringed upon Nvidia's patents, the potential damages that could be awarded to Nvidia are enormous, given the fact that its complaint involves hundreds of millions of Samsung products.
Samsung is no stranger to the patent wars, with its biggest battle waged against Apple, which was awarded by the courts hundreds of millions of dollars worth of licensing fees from Samsung. Samsung also proved to the jury that Apple also infringed upon its own patents and received a smaller sum as damages for Apple's infringement.
