Did Nvidia Infringe the "K-patent"? Lawsuit Begins in the U.S. [Prime Intellectual Property]

SiliconArts: "Nvidia Infringed Our Patent"
Filed Lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in March
"889 Patent Dispute Marks Move to Secure Compensation for Korean Technology"

A domestic semiconductor fabless company has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the global giant Nvidia. The company claims that Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) have infringed on the so-called "K-patent," which originated from a collaborative research effort between Korean academia and industry. There is an assessment that the "K-patent war" is entering a full-fledged phase, as proactive efforts are being made to secure fair compensation for domestic technology.

According to the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency on May 26, SiliconArts, a company headquartered in Korea, filed a lawsuit against Nvidia in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in March, alleging infringement of one of its patents. The patent in question relates to "real-time ray tracing" graphics hardware technology, which SiliconArts claims is implemented in Nvidia's GPU products. Real-time ray tracing is a graphics processing technology that creates realistic images by tracing the paths of virtual light rays as they reflect, refract, or transmit through the surfaces of objects.

According to the complaint, this technology was used in Nvidia's GeForce RTX 20, 30, 40, and 50 series graphics cards, in its professional Quadro RTX graphics cards, and in the data center Tensor Core GPUs used for AI and machine learning applications.

SiliconArts, a GPU-based fabless company, jointly researched and filed the patent in Korea in 2009 with Park Woochan, a professor at Sejong University’s Industry-Academia Cooperation Foundation. The company then filed a PCT international application and subsequently filed in the United States in 2016, with registration granted in 2018. In 2019, the patent became solely owned by SiliconArts. Registered in the U.S. under patent number US9965889, it is commonly referred to as the "889 patent." SiliconArts was founded by Yoon Hyungmin, a former researcher at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and has been licensing its self-developed GPU intellectual property (IP) to semiconductor companies. The company has been actively conducting business in the graphics IP sector, including signing a licensing agreement with China's VeriSilicon in 2022.

A portion of SiliconArts' shares is held by Intellectual Discovery, a domestic patent management entity (NPE). Intellectual Discovery was established in 2010 during the Lee Myung-bak administration as a joint government-private initiative to support domestic companies in patent disputes. The company specializes in managing the patents owned by SiliconArts.

A distinguishing feature of this lawsuit is that the plaintiff, SiliconArts' U.S. entity, has included both Nvidia's headquarters and its Singapore branch as defendants. Under U.S. law, foreign companies can generally be sued in any jurisdiction. The court is expected to examine whether Nvidia Singapore supplied products to the U.S. market and was thus indirectly involved in patent infringement. The plaintiff claims that Nvidia has willfully and unlawfully used the technology for over five years, and is seeking: (1) an injunction against patent infringement (both preliminary and permanent), (2) damages at least equal to the statutory minimum reasonable royalty for past infringement as well as litigation costs, and (3) treble punitive damages and attorney fees for willful infringement.

The fact that a domestic NPE is pursuing a patent lawsuit against a major overseas big tech company in the United States has drawn attention in the IP industry. Another domestic NPE, IdeaHub, is also engaged in a semiconductor patent lawsuit against Apple through its U.S. subsidiary. In February last year, IdeaHub filed an injunction lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, claiming that Apple's A-series and M-series chips used in its IT devices infringed its patents. IdeaHub is an NPE established in 2016 by Lim Kyungsoo, who previously handled IP affairs at LG Electronics. The Western District of Texas, where both IdeaHub and Intellectual Discovery are waging legal battles against big tech companies, is known for its patent-holder-friendly rulings.

The Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency stated, "This can be seen as an effort to actively exercise patents held by domestic technology developers in the international market to secure fair compensation," and added, "The successive lawsuits against large corporations by leveraging the patent-friendly jurisdictions in the United States can be regarded as the full-scale onset of the so-called 'K-patent war.'"