NVIDIA Files Countersuit Against Intel for Breach of Contract

“Seeks Termination of Intel’s License to their Technology” is the sub headline in a not-so-surprising turn of events.   Earlier we brought you news that the battle between Nvidia and Intel was heating up here.

In the meantime, Intel has sued Nvida, and in breaking news,  Nvidia returns the favor by countersuing Intel.  We will of course, keep you updated in this battle between Intel and Nvidia for the “Soul of the PC”, as Nvidia’s CEO is known to say.  One thing for sure, the lawyers will have their work cut out for them in arguing the contracts.  And it is bound to be expensive for both companies.

Here is Nvidia’s News Release:

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that it has filed a countersuit in the Court of Chancery in the State of Delaware against Intel Corporation for breach of contract. The action also seeks to terminate Intel’s license to NVIDIA’s valuable patent portfolio.

NVIDIA’s countersuit was brought in response to a filing by Intel last month in the Delaware court, alleging that the four-year-old chipset license agreement does not extend to Intel’s future generation CPUs with “integrated” memory controllers, such as its Nehalem processor.

“NVIDIA did not initiate this legal dispute,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. “But we must defend ourselves and the rights we negotiated for when we provided Intel access to our valuable patents. Intel’s actions are intended to block us from making use of the very license rights that they agreed to provide.”

NVIDIA entered into the disputed agreement in 2004 to bring platform innovations to Intel CPU-based systems. In return, Intel took a license to NVIDIA’s rich portfolio of 3D, GPU, and other computing patents. NVIDIA had been attempting for more than a year to resolve the disagreement with Intel in a fair and reasonable manner.

To read Intel’s initial filing, go to(1):

www.nvidia.com/object/io_1238021549708.html

To read NVIDIA’s response and counterclaim, go to(1): www.nvidia.com/object/io_1238021621363.html

Please join us in our Forums

Follow us on Twitter

For the latest updates from ABT, please join our RSS News Feed