The case is still months away from actually going to court

Apr 7, 2015 11:50 GMT  ·  By

Back in September, NVIDIA filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), as well as a lawsuit in the Delaware District Court, accusing Samsung and Qualcomm of infringing some of its GPU patents.

A month later, NVIDIA announced that the ITC had given the green light to its initial complaint and decided to investigate the patent infringement claims.

Some of the smartphones at issue included popular models like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4, the company indicated.

Which brings us to the present day. According to NVIDIA itself, presiding Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender has issued a favorable ruling for the tech company, thus setting the stage for a possible trial or maybe a negotiation session between the parties involved.

NVIDIA wins first round against Samsung and Qualcomm

However, don’t hold your breath yet, as NVIDIA hasn’t won anything thus far. The judge just decided, as a matter of law, the meaning and scope of the patents involved in the lawsuit.

In this particular case, in six out of seven patent claims, the judge favored NVIDIA’s claim constructions. The interpretation of claims will be subjected to scrutiny in the actual trial, but NVIDIA already feels that the odds are in its favor.

However, not all news is good news for the American tech company. Samsung has unleashed a counter suit against NVIDIA accusing the latter of falsely advertising its Tegra K1 as “the world’s fastest mobile processor.”

NVIDIA has backlashed at the Korean tech giant, accusing it of dragging one of its customers, Velocity Micro, into the lawsuit with no other purpose than to keep the suit inside the State of Virginia, where the company is based. Virginia is known for having a faster time to trial than any other state in the US.

Moreover NVIDIA says Samsung specifically targeted this small company to keep things inside the state, although NVIDIA wanted to have things moved to California.

Samsung and Qualcomm are yet to issue a response of their own, but if things go according to plan, we should see the case go to court in June.