The U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled that Samsung didn't use illegally any of NVDIA's GPU patents when designing its Qualcomm SoC found in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 3.
According to judge Thomas Pender at ITC, Samsung did not infringe two NVIDIA patents, and while it apparently did infringe a third, it's not a new invention anyway compared with the previously known patents so it doesn’t really count as a legal patent infringement.
According to Reuters who cited Nvidia spokesman Robert Sherbin, he said that the case ruling will be reviewed by the NVIDIA commission and on Friday will make a final decision, but it appears they will continue their efforts in combating the infringement situation. "We remain confident in our case," he said. Samsung, however, declined to comment on this situation.
NVIDIA loses the case in "friendly" territory
Last year in September, NVIDIA filed a complaint against Samsung and Qualcomm at the ITC who both manufacture the Snapdragon series that get inside the Samsung handsets mentioned above. To complete its two-pronged attack, NVIDIA sued the companies as well in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.
The ITC has the force to stop import of products that are considered to be an infringement of a U.S. patent, and it's being called up frequently by companies who want to impose a certain import ban. The funny part is that Samsung struck back at NVIDIA and filed suit as well against the American company for falsely advertising its Tegra X1 SoC as being the fastest mobile processor.
Apparently behind all this debacle was also a location war, in which NVIDIA and Samsung wanted to keep the suits in friendly territory, State of Virginia for Samsung and California for NVIDIA. The Green Team also accused Samsung fro dragging Velocity Micro as well into the lawsuit in order to have the case trialed in Virginia, where court cases are usually solved much faster than elsewhere.
Irony is that the final ITC verdict was ultimately given by a California court and thus in NVIDIA preferred state, with unfortunate results for the Greens.