NVIDIA Sues Samsung and Qualcomm, Tries To Get Samsung Galaxy Devices Blocked From The U.S.

Ready for another big patent battle?

NVIDIA has just filed patent lawsuits against both Samsung and Qualcomm, claiming the companies are infringing upon its graphics chip patents. The end goal? To block the shipment of Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets until Samsung coughs up patent licensing fees.

In a blog post on the matter, NVIDIA notes that it tried to negotiate with Samsung directly but was unable to reach a deal. According to NVIDIA’s Chief Administrative Officer David Shannon, “Samsung repeatedly said that this was mostly their suppliers’ problem.”

So far, NVIDIA has named 12 Samsung devices they want blocked: the Galaxy Note, Note Pro, Note 3, Tab S, Tab Pro, Tab 2, Galaxy S III, S4, S5, Infuse 4G, and, randomly, the super ancient Android clunker from 2011, the Samsung Illusion.

NVIDIA claims at least seven of its patents are being stepped on, covering such concepts as:

• The entire concept of the GPU, or a dedicated graphics processing chip
• Programmable shading
• Unified shading
• Multithreaded processing on a GPU

The biggest thing to consider here: Qualcomm’s chips, including its GPUs, are in many, many devices beyond just Samsung’s. Depending on how this one goes, Qualcomm might be in for quite a long battle.

You can find NVIDIA’s complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission (requesting the blockage of all Samsung Galaxy devices) here, and the lawsuit it just filed here.

[Photo by Laineema; used under CreativeCommons]