Phanteks put out its first statement in response to reports about Lian Li filing a patent infringement lawsuit against it. Lian Li alleges that Phanteks D30 RGB line of compound fans for radiators infringe upon a design patent held by the company, and that Lian Li Uni Fan series implement the original design defined in the patent. In particular, the controversy is around the design of the mechanism that lets you daisy-chain individual fans without cables. In its defense, Phanteks says that during the development of the D30 RGB series, its lawyers were duly consulted to look for IP conflicts. The company stated that it will face the legal challenge and is confident to prove that its product is not in infringement of Lian Li IP. The statement by Phanteks follows.

We at Phanteks can confirm the filing of the patent infringement suit filed by a fellow PC enthusiast brand. We want to inform the community that our legal team is and has always properly handled any legal issue or communication that has arose.

From the start of the Phanteks D30 fan development, we set out to design an original product that innovates to provide new solutions to PC enthusiasts. We have consulted with patent lawyers during the development and prior to the announcement of the D30 fans and the fans were not found to infringe on the claims in the patent. Phanteks D30 fans are an original idea and have been issued patents in multiple countries to date.

We value and respect valid and enforceable IP rights and are confident that the result of this legal matter will confirm there is no infringement. We will continue our mission to serve the PC community by creating unique and innovative solutions.

Stephen Totilo, a writer for the gaming section of Axios, has uncovered an intriguing tidbit from Microsoft's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) court documents. He injected some humor into this finding and posted on Twitter: "Microsoft's lawyers with some Project Q hype." According to the legal team's footnotes: "Sony is also anticipated to release a handheld version of PlayStation 5 later this year for under $300." The handheld gaming device was first revealed during late May's PlayStation Showcase, but teaser material only revealed a small number of details.

Sony indicated that Project Q will feature a 1920 x 1080 display (with a max. 60 Hz refresh) and in-built WiFi connectivity that allows the user to stream games from a host PlayStation 5 system. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has gathered information from company sources since that showcase, and proposed that the device can only sustain 3-4 hour play times. He also proposed that Sony should seriously consider launching the device at a low price of $200, given the handheld's alleged limited function as Remote Play-only. It is odd that Microsoft's legal representatives think that Project Q will act as a highly portable PlayStation 5 console, but they likely did not pay attention to the limited details available to them.

GlobalFoundries (GF) today sued IBM for trade secret misappropriation. The complaint asserts the former semiconductor manufacturing company has unlawfully disclosed GF's confidential IP and trade secrets, after IBM sold its microelectronics business to GF in 2015. The technology at issue was collaboratively developed, over decades, by the companies in Albany, New York and the sole and exclusive right to license and disclose that technology was transferred to GF upon the sale.

In the legal action filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, GF asserts that IBM unlawfully disclosed GF IP and trade secrets to IBM partners including Intel and Japan's Rapidus, a newly formed advanced logic foundry, and by doing so, IBM is unjustly receiving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing income and other benefits.

AMD and Analog Devices, Inc. today announced that they have resolved all their ongoing patent litigations, based on mutually agreed upon terms. As part of this resolution, the two companies have committed to pursue technology collaborations to bring next generation solutions to their communications and data center customers.

For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. Analog Devices, Inc. operates at the center of the modern digital economy, converting real-world phenomena into actionable insight with its comprehensive suite of analog and mixed signal, power management, radio frequency (RF), and digital and sensor technologies. ADI serves 125,000 customers worldwide with more than 75,000 products in the industrial, communications, automotive, and consumer markets. ADI is headquartered in Wilmington, MA.

The world of semiconductor IP licensing is complex by nature. If you use a company's IP, you must agree to its licensing terms. Today, it is precisely those terms that are being breached in the event of Arm Ltd. filing a lawsuit against one of its biggest customers, Qualcomm. When Qualcomm acquired Nuvia Inc., regarded as one of the best CPU design teams in the industry, it transferred Arm-Nuvia license agreements as its own. It continued the development of Arm IP under Qualcomm's name. This is a standard restriction, as Arm's licensing prohibits these sorts of IP transfers among companies to protect the IP.

As the UK-headquartered company reports: "Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm's consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm's license agreements, Nuvia's licenses terminated in March 2022. Before and after that date, Arm made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution. In contrast, Qualcomm has breached the terms of the Arm license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses. Arm was left with no choice other than to bring this claim against Qualcomm and Nuvia to protect our IP, our business, and to ensure customers are able to access valid Arm-based products."

A federal judge in Seattle has recently ruled that the antitrust class-action lawsuit brought against Valve by Wolfire Games over their Steam Key Price Parity Provision can proceed. The Key Price Parity Provision is a policy that prohibits game developers from pricing their games cheaper on competing storefronts such as the Epic Games Store even if they offer lower fees. The judge noted that Valve "relies on provisions within Steamworks Documentation to impose conditions on how non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced." and that "Valve also threatens game publishers with punitive action, including removal of their Steam-enabled games, if they sell non-Steam-enabled versions of those games at lower prices,". The ruling states that allegations of the company exploiting it's market dominance to threaten and retaliate against developers were "sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct". This decision will allow for a class-action lawsuit to be brought against Valve.

Last year, we found out that a group of investors has accused NVIDIA that the company has misled its investors by reporting crypto revenue as gaming revenue numbers and making its gaming revenue seem much bigger than it is. The original lawsuit was filed in 2017 and it demanded that NVIDIA should pay one billion US Dollars to investors shall they be proven right. In 2017, cryptocurrency mining was at the same craze it is today, with people buying every possible card that exists and consumers having a hard time upgrading their PCs. Investors in NVIDIA corporation have believed that in 2017, the company has presented its cryptocurrency earning figures as a part of the gaming figures, thus giving misleading information about the company's success in the gaming market.

Today, we have information that NVIDIA has won this lawsuit. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam has dismissed the case and ruled that investors were unable to provide any significant evidence that the company has used such practices and misled investors. By taking this case off the company, NVIDIA will not be paying one billion USD to the accusing investors and the company continues operations as normal.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Sony by Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP regarding the alleged drift present on Sony's latest DualShock 5 controller which comes bundled with the PlayStation 5. The lawsuit was filed on February 12th in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and argues that the DualShock 5 controller is defective as it suffers from drift compromising the core functionality of the device. The lawsuit also notes the limited repair options available and Sony's lack of disclosure to customers even after numerous reported cases. Sony joins Nintendo and Microsoft who are both also in multiple court battles regarding drift on their respective controllers.

Intel has reportedly caught an ex-employee stealing confidential company files for the Xeon processor lineup. Dr. Varun Gupta, who left Intel last year to join Microsoft as Principal for Strategic Planning in Cloud and AI, has reportedly walked away with over 3900 files of confidential information. The stolen files, contain information about Intel's Xeon processors, pricing data, corporate strategies, and Intel's manufacturing capabilities of the chips. Dr. Gupta is being sued by Intel for 75,000 USD and liability to not use confidential Intel information again. The security forensics team at Intel has discovered that Dr. Gupta downloaded almost 4000 files on multiple USB drives, however, Dr. Gupta is denying these claims. We are waiting to hear more information about the situation as it evolves.

The epic (ahem) battle between Epic Games and Apple is becoming increasingly nastier, as Apple has communicated to the game and game engine developers that it plans on terminating all of Epic developer accounts on its ecosystem (both on iOS or MacOS) by August 28th. If done, this would impede not only Epic from developing for these systems, but also would impact any and all companies that actually employ the Unreal Engine in their development process, be it final or merely as a toolbox. It's case to say that Apple has its finger firmly set on the big, red button.

This move from Apple comes in wake of the calculated feud initiated by Epic Games last week with both Google and Apple. What some may have failed to see is that the Epic Games move was a coordinated, well-thought-out one, in that the company knew - or thought they knew - the full ramifications of what they were setting in motion. Epic Games, with its newfound budget and clout, is looking to become a banner for developers, spearheading a charge that is looking to brunt the walled garden approach. In fact, the company is even looking to form a "coalition of Apple critics", and is looking for companies to join its bandwagon in fighting against the Apple walled-garden and middle-man approach to software distribution.

Today, Epic Games has decided to file a lawsuit against both Apple and Google after both companies removed Fortnite form their platform app stores (Google Play and Apple App Store). Firstly, Apple has decided to remove the Fortnite app to form its App Store because the game violated the company's policy that all in-game payments must go through the Apple App Store system, instead of them being processed directly. That means that Apple can also apply its 30% cut on all the payments made in-game. After Apple has revoked the Fortnite app, Epic Games has decided to file a lawsuit that aims to fight the company's monopoly and make the iOS platform more developer-friendly. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said that Epic will not seek or accept any special deal that Apple may offer, but rather wants to fight for all developers.

Just hours after Apple decided to pull the Fortnite game from its App Store, Google has also removed the game from its Google Play Store. Google's Play Store policy about in-app payments says that all games must use Google Play in-app billing if they want to process payments, so Fortnite was pulled from it as well. In light of that move, Epic Games has also filed a lawsuit against Google on the same terms. The company wants to fight both Apple and Google in court and make them be more developer-friendly, especially Apple. We have to wait and see how the case progresses. Being that Apple is almost a $2 trillion company, it can surely afford lots of good lawyers, just as Google will. We want to express our support for Epic Games for going in the right direction, as we do need more open ecosystems.

JOLED, a Japanese Display, Sony and Panasonic group, has recently filed patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung. The fillings against Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display, and Samsung Electronics' U.S. subsidiary, were filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on June 22. There's a concurrent filling against Samsung's German subsidiary running through the District Court of Mannheim in Germany as well. JOLED claims Samsung has been infringing on JOLED's intelectual property on OLED technology (on which the company holds around 4,000 patents) particularly in Samsung Galaxy handsets that have been sold in the US.

We covered JOLED's entrance in to the OLED market back in December 2018. At the time, the company was entering the small-display market with 21.6" offerings. Meanwhile, the company received a 20 billion yen (around $187 million) cash injection from CSOT, a Chinese display company owned by TCL Corporation. This allowed to company to scale its OLED manufacturing for large display panels; the company announced mass production of TV-bound OLED panels on June 19th.

NVIDIA investors have recently filed a suit against the company, claiming that NVIDIA wrongfully detailed its revenue indicators between departments. The main point of contention here is that investors claim NVIDIA knowingly obfuscated the total value of the crypto market boom (and subsequent bust) from investors, thus painting a picture of the company's outlook than was different from reality (making demand for the Gaming division look higher than it was in reality) and exposing them to a different state of affairs and revenue gains than they expected. The investors say that NVIDIA knew that a not insignificant number of its graphics cards sold between 2017 and 2018 was being bought-up solely for the purpose of crypto mining, and that the company knew this (and even marketed GPUs specifically for that purpose).

The crypto mining boom had miners gobbling up all NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards that they could, with both companies seemingly increasing production to meet the crypto mining bubble demand. However, due to the economics of crypto mining, it was clear that any profits derived from this bubble would ultimately open the door to an explosive logistics problem, as miners offloaded their graphics cards to the second-hand market, which could ultimately harm NVIDIA's financial book. Of course, one can look at NVIDIA's revenue categories at the time to see that crypto would hardly fit neatly into either the Gaming, Professional Visualization, Datacenter, Auto, or OEM & IP divisions.

Apple late last week agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of slowing down iPhones without the knowledge or consent of users, motivating them to upgrade their devices or batteries. The settlement amount is marked at USD $500 million or $25 per member of the class (which could be adjusted depending on how many iPhones from the class are found eligible). The lawsuit is being heard by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, and its settlement offer by Apple is subject to his approval.

In the settlement offer papers by Apple, the company reportedly denies wrongdoing, and seeks to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation. Eligible members of the class are U.S. owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus or SE that ran the iOS 10.2.1 or later operating system. It also covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017. Initial outcry after discovery of Apple's secret CPU throttling cause the company to apologize for the practice, promise transparency in the future, and introduce the "Battery Health" feature in iOS that informs users of the decay of their device's lithium ion battery (ability to hold charge), and give performance throttling control to end-users.

AMD reached a settlement in the Class Action Lawsuit filed against it, over alleged false-marketing of the core-counts of its eight-core FX-series processors based on the "Bulldozer" microarchitecture. Each member of the Class receives a one-time payout of USD $35 per chip, while the company takes a hit of $12.1 million. The lawsuit dates back to 2015, when Tony Dickey, representing himself in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accused AMD of false-marketing of its FX-series "Bulldozer" processor of having 8 CPU cores. Over the following four years, the case gained traction as a Class Action was built against AMD this January.

In the months that followed the January set-up of a 12-member Jury to examine the case, lawyers representing the Class and AMD argued over the underlying technology that makes "Bulldozer" a multi-core processor, and eventually discussed what a fair settlement would be for the Class. They eventually agreed on a number - $12.1 million, or roughly $35 per chip AMD sold, which they agreed was "fair," and yet significantly less than the "$60 million in premiums" consumers contended they paid for these processors. Sifting through these numbers, it's important to understand what the Class consists of. It consists of U.S. consumers who became interested to be part of the Class Action, and who bought an 8-core processor based on the "Bulldozer" microarchitecture. It excludes consumers of every other "Bulldozer" derivative (4-core, 6-core parts, APUs; and follow-ups to "Bulldozer" such as "Piledriver," "Excavator," etc.).Image Credit: Taylor Alger

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world's leading specialty foundry based in the United States, today filed multiple lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany alleging that semiconductor manufacturing technologies used by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) infringe 16 GF patents. The lawsuits were filed today in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. Federal District Courts in the Districts of Delaware and the Western District of Texas, and the Regional Courts of Dusseldorf and Mannheim in Germany.

In filing the lawsuits, GF seeks orders that will prevent semiconductors produced with the infringing technology by Taiwan-based TSMC, the dominant semiconductor manufacturer, from being imported into the U.S. and Germany. These lawsuits require GF to name certain major customers of TSMC and downstream electronics companies, who, in most cases, are the actual importers of the products that incorporate the infringing TSMC technology. GF also seeks significant damages from TSMC based on TSMC's unlawful use of GF's proprietary technology in its tens of billions of dollars of sales.

The new year does not seem to bring good tidings alone for NVIDIA, with yet another class action lawsuit promising to keep their legal team busy. When we first posted about NVIDIA stock prices falling 2.1% following the launch of their Turing microarchitecture cards, there was no warning that just a few days after that post things would get worse. Indeed, as of today, the NVIDIA stock price on the NASDAQ stock market has fallen nearly 54% from the 1-year high that was only this past calendar quarter. California-based Schall law firm believes this drop in price can be attributed to more than just the volatile trading that has been ongoing in general in the stock markets, and has decided to file a class action lawsuit against NVIDIA.

Schall Law believes, and we quote, "the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. NVIDIA touted its ability to monitor the cryptocurrency market and make rapid changes to its business as necessary. The Company claimed to be "masters at managing our channel, and we understand the channel very well." NVIDIA also claimed to the market that any drop off in demand for its GPUs amongst cryptocurrency miners would not negatively impact the Company's business because of strong demand for GPUs from the gaming market. Based on these facts, the Company's public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about NVIDIA, investors suffered damages." These are strong words indeed, as oft is the case with the launch of class action lawsuits, and they have put out a press statement to accompany a link for those wanting to join along which can be seen in the source below.

Remember the lawsuit ZeniMax threw Oculus' way? Well, that seems to be settled now, after a back and forward that always saw Oculus (even after the Facebook acquisition) having to pay damages to ZeniMax - at first, $500 million, which was then reduced to $250 million.

Now, the litigation seems to have come to an end, as CNBC reports that ZeniMax's CEO has acknowledged that a settlement was reached. The terms of the settlement were undisclosed (and so was the sum that Facebook definitely had to pay ZeniMax), but CNBC got a statement from the ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman that read: "We are pleased that a settlement has been reached and are fully satisfied by the outcome. While we dislike litigation, we will always vigorously defend against any infringement or misappropriation of our intellectual property by third parties." While ZeniMax says they are fully satisfied with the outcome, it's certainly a far cry from the original up to $4 billion and Oculus sales being blocked that the company was after in the initial terms of the lawsuit.

Earlier in January of this year, PUBG Corp threw a lawsuit at Epic Games, looking to assert its rights to the "Battle Royale" mode that game was mimicking from the original Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. It now seems that PUBG Corp has decided to throw in the towel over its pursuit of Epic Games' Fortnite as a "straight copy" of its battle royale mode - a move that came only after Fortnite had eclipsed PUBG Corp's game in concurrent players and revenue generation.

Perhaps at least part of this issue was dealt with by Chinese giant Tencent, which owns part of Bluehole Inc (PUBG Corp's parent company) and part of Epic Games - it hurts investors when two of their pots are throwing dirt at each other. Another part of the equation - and the most likely, considering the amount of time the lawsuit survived in court - pertains to how PUBG makes use of EPIC Games' Unreal Engine. I'd say it's at least slightly important to keep a good relationship with such a company.

Despite the grunt of the media's attention and overall customer rage having been thrown largely at Intel, AMD hasn't moved past the Spectre/Meltdown well, meltdown, unscathed. News has surfaced that at least two law firms have announced their intention of filing a class action lawsuit against AMD, accusing the company of not having disclosed their products' Spectre vulnerability, despite knowledge of said vulnerabilities.

AMD stated loud and clear that their processors weren't affected by the Meltdown flaw. However, regarding Spectre, AMD's terms weren't as clear cut. The company stated that its CPUs were vulnerable to the Spectre 1 flaw (patchable at a OS level), but said that vulnerability to Spectre 2's variant had "near-zero risk of exploitation". At the same time, the company also said that "GPZ Variant 2 (Branch Target Injection or Spectre) is applicable to AMD processors", adding that "While we believe that AMD's processor architectures make it difficult to exploit Variant 2, we continue to work closely with the industry on this threat.

Following reports of Intel's gross mishandling of its CPU vulnerabilities Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715), and Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754); particularly its decision to not call off 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" processor launch after learning of its vulnerability; and a general barrage of "false marketing" allegations, with a dash of "insider trading" allegations added to the mix, the company is bracing for an avalanche of class-action lawsuits in the US, and similar legal action around the world.

Owners of Intel CPU-based computers in California, Oregon, and Indiana, have filed separate complaints alleging that Intel sold vulnerable processors even after the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre; that the chips being sold were "inherently faulty," and that patches that fix them are both an "inadequate response to the problem," and "hurt performance" (false marketing about performance), by 5 to 30 percent. All three complainants are in the process of building Classes.

Newegg (owned by Beijing-based Hangzhou Liaison Interactive Information Technology) has been sued by a conglomerate of South Korean banks. The plaintiffs claim that the Southern California computer parts retailer has aided, abetted, and profited from enabling a Ponzi Scheme to take place with its products orders. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleges that Newegg and ASI Corp., a South Korean computer wholesaler, made fraudulent orders from Korean hardware manufacturer Moneual, whose chief executive, Hong-seok Park, was sentenced in 2015 to 23 years in prison for financial fraud, and additionally subject to fines and forfeitures.

Newegg and ASI took part on the whole scheme by creating non-existent, exaggerated-pricing (sometimes 300x higher than market value) orders for Moneual products, thus allowing it to gain a higher valuation from investors. By inflating sales figures, the suit alleges that Moneual was able to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from South Korean banks. As a reward, Newegg and ASI received kickbacks from Moneual.

Asetek, a company known for designing water-cooling solutions for PC hardware that it sometimes licenses to other manufacturers, has lost a patent infringement lawsuit it had levied against Cooler Master. The lawsuit, which looked to impede the sale of Cooler Master products Nepton 120XL, Nepton 240M and Seidoen 120 V v.2, stated that Cooler Master was infringing on Asetek's European EP 1 923 771 patent, which describes a water cooling mechanism. This Asetek patent, filed in November 2004 and finally approved in May 2015, is in itself based on Asetek's older, US-bound patents.

However, The Hague's court has accepted Cooler Master's argument that they too have a similar patent to Asetek's, through a so-called "utility model" that already exists in China, which describes (and patents really show their problems here) the "operation of a water pumping engine device with chamber". The The Hague judge also invalidated Asetek's patent lawsuit on the basis that there was not enough inventiveness to it. Asetek and Cooler Master's legal battles aren't anything new; in 2015, a US-based court ordered Cooler Master to pay Asetek $600,000 for patent infringement. This time, it's the other way around, even though it was still Asetek that started the legal battle: the company now has to pay Cooler Master for their legal expenses, which amount to around €113,000 (~$134,204)

AMD Tuesday agreed to settle in its longstanding class-action lawsuit by investors for making misleading guidance over its first-generation accelerated processing units (APUs), codenamed "Llano." AMD was alleged to have oversold the potential of "Llano" in driving up revenues to the company, causing losses to investors. AMD is reported to have reached an agreement with the class to settle for USD $29.5 million. The settlement is yet to be approved by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has been hearing the case since 2014, sitting in session for the US District Court in Oakland, California. Under the proposed deal, AMD's insurers foot the bill for the settlement, while it continues to deny any wrongdoing.

Russian-based Kaspersky Labs is backing away from its earlier threat of an antitrust case filing with the European Commission, instead opting for a "wait and see" approach with regards to its complaints with Microsoft over Windows 10 and its included security software "Windows Defender."

Kaspersky Labs has been threatening to press an antitrust action since November 2016, when in a November blog post titled "That's it. I've had enough!" Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky complained that Microsoft did not give developers ample time to prepare for a new Windows release, and was using their "compatibility checker" tool to effectively remove competing software in favor of Windows Defender.