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When you can't sell your hardware on its own merits...

drunkenmaster said:
Comparing patent trolling to genuine lawsuits is silly, AMD were a genuine victim of a decade or more of Intel illegally paying companies not to sell AMD products. It's completely illegal, utterly legitimate to sue a company over and they won. If AMD had billions in cash on hand and could have afforded the lawsuit.. they'd have won potentially $10billion or more off Intel in damages. The ridiculous nature of the law is Intel could afford to fight the court case till AMD was bankrupt, appealing the court, taking years and AMD literally didn't have the funds to pay lawyers for that long so they took a fraction of that in a settlement.

Similar to Creative vs.. Aureal is it(i forget the name specifically), they did some dodgy as hell things but had more money and in that case really did bankrupt the other company and "won" the battle via bankruptcy.

If you have more money then you don't have to be right to "win" a legal battle. :(
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could be the start of nvidia negotiating a deal with samsung to implement some of their chips instead of qualc etc, little stunt, we let it go but use tegra :D pretty plzzz!!!
 
Nice to see the forum lawyers out in force :rolleyes:

I also noticed everyone's jumped straight on nvidias back without knowing the intimate details? Any excuse eh.

Anyone think maybe they have a point? Maybe they have a solid case? Maybe it's worth them spending millions in legal fees to make a point to the tech world about their patents. I'm not suggesting they have any of this but everyone else seems to be of the assumption of nvidia = bad, they cannot possibly be doing something relatively normal in this day an age - protecting your financial interests.
 
Gregster said:
No, I said lawsuits seems the norm regardless of me agreeing/disagreeing with it. And it is the consumer who pays for it in the end with higher prices to cover losses/lawyers fees etc.

The thing that makes me chuckle and it seriously does is poor old AMD and bad nVidia always :D
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Sorry,but how you can compare this to what was done to AMD?

It was also done to Nvidia too with chipsets(which destroyed their motherboard arm) which meant Intel paid Nvidia a billion dollars(or something along the lines too) after litigation as "licensing".

Unlike with AMD(lump sum) it was paid over several years - IIRC,at least $100 million of Nvidia's yearly profits are due to the payout.

In both cases Intel strongarmed AMD and Nvidia directly and indirectly by using backhanded tactics - in the case of AMD it was bribing OEMs and in the case of Nvidia it was giving them a hobsons choice. They both lost a LOT of money from this,and in the end consumers suffered whilst Intel shareholders just got richer.
 
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pgi947 said:
Nice to see the forum lawyers out in force :rolleyes:

I also noticed everyone's jumped straight on nvidias back without knowing the intimate details? Any excuse eh.

Anyone think maybe they have a point? Maybe they have a solid case? Maybe it's worth them spending millions in legal fees to make a point to the tech world about their patents. I'm not suggesting they have any of this but everyone else seems to be of the assumption of nvidia = bad, they cannot possibly be doing something relatively normal in this day an age - protecting your financial interests.
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Yes, Nvidia are trying to sue people for using GPU's because Nvidia invented them.... except, Nvidia didn't invent them and everyone on earth knows nvidia didn't invent them. They are patent trolling, it's been coming for some time. This was basically an expected move thanks to previous things Nvidia has been doing in the past 12-18 months.

Here's a hint, you don't start licensing your IP completely out of the blue, for a company that has never licensed IP like that, when absolutely no one was interested in said IP, and they have precisely no customers for this IP.

What's funnier is when it's completely obvious what a company is doing, that someone will always try the "you don't know what's going on, stop being mean to my bestest friend nvidia".

People love Apple, but knew exactly what they were doing with "hey Mr Judge, our biggest enemy is daring to use round corners on a device, we invented round corners... please make them give us eleventy billion dollars". I think everyone on earth found the idea Apple invented rounded corners on a device to be laughably stupid. I don't think I saw more than a handful of nut jobs defend it as anything but patent trolling and 99% of the press described it as patent trolling.

Calling an apple and apple, isn't showing inherent bias to apples, it's just calling something what it is.
 
ITT: People who don't know the definition of patent trolling.

Pro Tip: If you spend billions in R&D and actually sell products based on your patents, you are not trolling.

While obviously the usual suspects will leap into battle to bash Nvidia, just for a moment stop to think that over the years they just might have a case here. Even if they didn't invent something themselves, and bought it from a third party, they are still under obligation to defend it just as if it was inhouse.
 
Whose Bashing Nvidia? how do people suddenly jump for that old chestnut? Christ they are not your dear old Grandmother.
 
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Pottsey said:
Didn’t PowerVR have Programmable shading and Unified shading long before NVidia? Not sure who was first on Multithreaded processing on a GPU.

http://www.google.com/patents/US6198488
That one PowerVR had well before NVidia. NVidia filing date Dec 6, 1999. PowerVR old pre 1999 series 2 chips outside the PC market had hardware T&L with Transform, lighting and rasterization system embodied on a single semiconductor platform.
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Sometimes truth don't matter...it's like North Korea believes they invented spaghetti and pizza, and Italy copied them :p
 
Hmm.. Perhaps 'stick the knife in' would have been a better turn of phrase. Still, the basic point stands, Uninformed armchair lawyers all too eager to achieve maximum negative spin because they favour another GPU vendor. All too tiresome.

I'd expect that Nvidia would not be prepared to go to war (in legal sense) with one of the largest corporations on the planet if they did not think they had a case.
 
I will leave this thread for the forum lawyers to sort out. It will be watched though, so keep it calm and friendly.
 
Who cares, they can sue who they want.

Least they're taking a stab at the mobile market.....


The tallest trees always take the most wind. Just a shame most of that wind comes out of most of the AMD community's oraphis
 
layte said:
ITT: People who don't know the definition of patent trolling.

Pro Tip: If you spend billions in R&D and actually sell products based on your patents, you are not trolling.

While obviously the usual suspects will leap into battle to bash Nvidia, just for a moment stop to think that over the years they just might have a case here. Even if they didn't invent something themselves, and bought it from a third party, they are still under obligation to defend it just as if it was inhouse.
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Talking utter nonsense again.

Apple has 10's of thousands of patents, yet still chose to patent rounded corners on a device, and chose to sue ONE company over that patent, that company happened to be it's biggest rival. This is absolutely, 100% patent trolling, which happens to 100% prove your statement about a large company who sell products not being capable of being a patent troll.

That companies have legitimate patents, does not in any way prevent them from being a patent troll. We have obvious proof of this all over the place yet you try to point out how someone else doesn't know what they are talking about when you are categorically wrong, as usual.

EDIT:- for the record, my back up Sendo phone(from like late 90's or something, flip phone, no internet, crap as hell) has rounded corners, my 5 year old laptop has rounded corners, both of my monitors have rounded corners, my tv has rounded corners, my 360 has rounded corners.

Almost everything I own, alarm clock, electrical devices, everything has rounded corners... why because people worked out sharp corners were bad.... about 40 years ago.... yet Apple decided to patent this and sue a competitor, there is absolutely no description and no possible argument that this behaviour was anything except patent trolling.
 
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Lots of words, little substance or basis in fact as per usual.

Please. Go look up the definition of patent trolling. Nvidia are as far away from being a patent troll as it's possible to be.

Now I know you are financially incentivised to put down Nvidia. But at least have your rants based in some foundation of fact.

Nvidia have spent billions of dollars over the past twenty plus years inventing new ideas and technology. They have a right to protect that investment.

Edit: nice straw man
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Anandtech on the matter:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8492/...ringement-complaints-against-qualcomm-samsung
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Funny how that article seems to have a completely different take on the whole thing.

Mentioning that some of the patents stem back from a company that 3DFX bought and in turn was bought by Nvidia.
The fact that Nvidia has been trying to get Samsung and Qualcomm to sort out a licensing deal for the last two years, so this is not really out of the blue.
The fact that Nvidia sued Intel for a similar use of its patents and Intel settled out of court 3 years ago.

On the whole the Anandtech article seems much more pro Nvidia rather than the Reuters article is very anti Nvidia.

Of course there is a lot more going on here than any one of us can possible hope to understand and as these two articles show there are many ways to report the news that show it to be a good or bad thing.
 
Things like unified shaders should not be patentable, if it's an idea that anyone would have thought of eventually within a reasonable timeframe, it should be Free.

Unfortunately corporatism is holding us back big time.
 
layte said:
Lots of words, little substance or basis in fact as per usual.

Please. Go look up the definition of patent trolling. Nvidia are as far away from being a patent troll as it's possible to be.

Now I know you are financially incentivised to put down Nvidia. But at least have your rants based in some foundation of fact.

Nvidia have spent billions of dollars over the past twenty plus years inventing new ideas and technology. They have a right to protect that investment.

Edit: nice straw man
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I love, I mean love that you keep wanting to stick with a definition of patent troll, then you'd realise that Nvidia got most of these patents by picking up 3dfx's ip portfolio when they were effectively bankrupt.... then they are now using these patents to troll other companies. It is, as you put it, the very definition of patent trolling.

I'm also have absolutely no financial incentive to put down Nvidia. So you attack my character rather than my point, then randomly call it a straw man.

In both cases I didn't result to attacking your character nor making baseless "straw man" accusations. The person that does those things rarely if ever has a freaking clue what they are talking about.

Specifically you claimed that

If you spend billions in R&D and actually sell products based on your patents, you are not trolling.
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I gave you a direct counter example, which is not little substance in fact, it is absolute proof you are wrong. You're trying to use one thing, spending billions on R&D for some patents, to suggest that every patent a large corporation has cost significant amounts of R&D(false) and can't possibly be patent trolling(false). Apple went out and patented round corners, despite spending many more billions, and bringing in more money than Nvidia ever will, despite having patents that cover billions of unique IP to Apple, that individual patent was done to patent troll.

But even to the point, as above, the ones they appear to be using, basic fundamental concepts, were not paid for in billions in R&D, they were bought by another company who didn't spend billions at all, and they bought the IP for a fraction of the R&D cost from an effectively bankrupt company.

But attack my character or make baseless claims, ignore all the points as it suits you.
 
bru said:
Funny how that article seems to have a completely different take on the whole thing.

Mentioning that some of the patents stem back from a company that 3DFX bought and in turn was bought by Nvidia.
The fact that Nvidia has been trying to get Samsung and Qualcomm to sort out a licensing deal for the last two years, so this is not really out of the blue.
The fact that Nvidia sued Intel for a similar use of its patents and Intel settled out of court 3 years ago.

On the whole the Anandtech article seems much more pro Nvidia rather than the Reuters article is very anti Nvidia.

Of course there is a lot more going on here than any one of us can possible hope to understand and as these two articles show there are many ways to report the news that show it to be a good or bad thing.
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Yes, it's not out the blue, the entire industry is aware of it. Kepler licensing... this is what that was about. Everyone knows it, they "licensed" kepler with zero intention of actually having people license the tech to stick on gpu's or soc's. The plan was always to patent troll, make available a license, hope some companies would fold and just pay them off(because it's often cheaper than a court case). By all accounts Nvidia have been trying for two years to get multiple companies to license Kepler to get access to these patents, everyone told them to go do one. The result is Nvidia try, probably not to win the case at all. As Anandtech point out, this could take 3 years to get in to court. What they hope is the threat of spending billions against a big player with deep pockets like Samsung, will scare all the smaller players into just paying up.

IE Nvidia get told to do one, so they make a big gesture of, if we're willing to take on Samsung which will cost billions, imagine what we'll do to you if you don't pay us to license these, even if you aren't infringing, even if we can't win, we'll tie you up in a legal battle costing 100's of millions for at least 3-4 years, when you can just pay us 20mil a year and be done with it.

Remember even if Nvidia never win, or pull out of the court case, big businesses with deep pockets can just bankrupt you in court. The american legal system in particular is utterly insane. I can't remember in which situations the loser is liable for the legal costs of the other side. I think that is one of the bigger problems with the US and maybe it's the euro area where when you patent troll and lose you pay the other guys court costs where as in America a company can win the case but lose millions upon millions in legal fee's making it cheaper to settle.
 
As a non-lawyer, I don't see how those patents were even granted...

Why is "hyperthreading on a gpu" an invention? Hyperthreading has been done before, why is doing it on a new device a new invention? Does that mean that "hyperthreading on a toaster" or "hyperthreading on a satnav" are "new" inventions too? Strange...

And how on Earth can they patent a chip to "light up a display"? Where is the invention here?

In general, these patents seem to be completely devoid of any actual invention.
 
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