Nvidia loses its appeal on ITC patent loss

No surprise once again, but it will be re-appealed

Dec 21, 2015 by

Nvidia logoWhile it is starting to sound like a broken record, Nvidia’s latest appeal got slapped down by the ITC. Just like SemiAccurate predicted, the ITC has affirmed that several of the patents in question are invalid or non-infringed upon.

As SemiAccurate said when the initial decision was made in October, the company had something between little to no chance of success on their appeal. Our opinion on this was mainly based on the facts, there was no basis to the patent infringement claims and the appeal didn’t have anything solid to appeal on. Between that and the initial ‘victory’ being an impediment to the appeal, we were quite confident that the appeal was just a PR move,

Last week the ITC issued two new notices, a ruling that there would be another ruling before the 15th, and a ruling on the 14th. That second ruling that the first predicted said exactly what we expected, there was nothing wrong with the initial decision, the three remaining patents were either invalid, non-infringing, or both. Nvidia effectively lost those three patents but there was no mention of the four they voluntarily but silently withdrew over the summer. This is about as complete a loss as Nvidia could have suffered.

In short when we said the initial patent ‘licensing’ scheme had no chance of success, people were incredulous. When SemiAccurate called it nothing more than base patent trolling, the PR and FUD engines were turned up to make ‘truth’ about the validity and worth of those patents. Unfortunately for Nvidia this manufactured ‘truth’ was just that, hollow and manufactured, definitely not something you want to start legal proceedings on.

Nvidia did. Nvidia spent lots of money doing so. This was folly. Nvidia promises to appeal the current appeal loss although the avenues for doing so go beyond our legal knowledge. We are however confident that like the previous legal maneuvering, this too will be a very expensive public loss. Why? Because it has no basis for it other than executive pique, the facts were, are, and will be against Nvidia, a classic case of patent trolling. At this point any money spent pursuing these avenues further is simply money wasted for short-term headlines and bullet points on analyst calls. Folly indeed, just like we said when it all began.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate