US judge: Nvidia infringes on Samsung’s patents

Nvidia has infringed three of Samsung’s patents, according to a US judge. With the ruling, Samsung is one step closer to a full win in the lawsuit it started against Nvidia.

The next step is review of the ruling by the US International Trade Commission, USITC, Bloomberg reported. If it is decided there that the judge is right, then all devices that infringe the patents can be banned from the American market. In this case, it mainly concerns Nvidia’s Shield tablet.

According to the judge, Nvidia infringes three patents in the US, namely 6,173,349, 6,147,385 and 7,804,734. According to Bloomberg, one of the patents will expire in a year, shortly after a ban on the import of Nvidia products can be introduced. It probably concerns patent 6,147,385, a patent on a certain type of SRAM cell. The other two patents are about a method to have less delay in a bus system and about data signal buffers and memory systems.

Samsung and Nvidia have been at odds with each other over patents for several years. Earlier this month, the USITC had already decided not to look again at a lawsuit from Nvidia against Samsung and Qualcomm. Then a judge ruled that Samsung and Qualcomm were not infringing on Nvidia patents.