move along, folks, no infringement here —

Samsung patent counterstrike against Nvidia falls flat

Another patent war that isn't paying off, for anyone.

Samsung patent counterstrike against Nvidia falls flat

In 2014, Nvidia filed its first-ever patent lawsuit. The target was Korean smartphone giant Samsung. Predictably, Samsung struck back—but a jury's verdict that came out on Friday shows neither side is getting traction.

Nvidia claimed that Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets containing Qualcomm’s Adreno, ARM’s Mali, or Imagination’s PowerVR graphics architectures all infringed its patents on core GPU technologies.

Almost a year and a half later, the litigation hasn't produced great results for either side. In October, an International Trade Commission judge rejected Nvidia's complaint, finding its three asserted patents were all not infringed or invalid. The decision must be approved by the full commission to take effect.

Even worse for Nvidia, while its own case failed, one of Samsung's counterattacks is advancing—albeit not against Nvidia directly. In December, an ITC judge said Samsung's patents were infringed. "Since we don’t import any significant amount of products directly, they [Samsung] had filed the suit to enjoin the imports of several small companies that use our products," a company spokesperson wrote in a blog post on how they would appeal Samsung's win.

In tandem with the ITC suit, Samsung also filed a countersuit in federal court. That suit resolved on Friday when a Virginia federal jury held (PDF) that Nvidia didn't infringe Samsung's US Patent No. 6,819,602 and that one of its claims was invalid. The patent is entitled "Multimode data buffer and method for controlling propagation delay time."

Nvidia has its own patent claims in that court; the company may get a hearing now that Samsung's case is resolved. But it looks like Nvidia started a patent war of attrition that is very unlikely to pay off.

Channel Ars Technica