Samsung Electronics fires back at Nvidia with chip patents lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has accused Nvidia Corp of infringing several of its chip-related patents and for making false claims about its products, counter-suing after Nvidia filed a suit against the Korean company in September.

Samsung Electronics, which filed a lawsuit in a U.S. federal court on Nov. 4, is seeking damages for deliberate infringement of several technical patents, including a few that govern the way semiconductors buffer and use data.

The South Korean firm, the world's largest smartphone maker, also accuses Nvidia of false advertising when it says its "Shield" tablet sports the world's fastest mobile processor, the Tegra. Samsung Electronics cites benchmarking studies performed by researchers at Primate Labs as proving that claim false.

"We are pursuing necessary legal measures to defend our intellectual property rights and to ensure our continued growth in the IT industry," Samsung Electronics said in an emailed statement.

Samsung's lawsuit came after Nvidia accused the Asian company and rival Qualcomm Inc of infringing patents on its graphics-processing unit (GPU).

Nvidia vies with Qualcomm in the business of providing chips for smartphones and tablets. The U.S. chipmaker said in September that Qualcomm and Samsung had used Nvidia's patented technologies without a license in Samsung's mobile devices, including the just-launched Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge.

"We'll review and respond to these new claims against us, and look forward to presenting our case on how Nvidia GPU patents are being used without a license," Nvidia said in a statement on Tuesday.

Nvidia also pointed to a benchmarking study that supported its claim that the Tegra was the fastest mobile processor on the market.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Additional reporting by Se Young Lee in SEOUL; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Ryan Woo)