Intel asks court to settle Nvidia licensing dispute

Intel and Nvidia will let a judge decide whether a four-year-old chipset licensing agreement between the two companies extends into new technologies, such as Intel's Nehalem microprocessors, which come with integrated memory controllers.

Intel maintains that the agreements between the companies does not extend to those technologies while Nvidia says that the agreements contain no language that limits the licensing to specific products and does not carry any sort of expiration date.

After a year of negotiations, Intel on Monday filed a (sealed) suit in Delaware court. Today, Nvidia issued a statement in reply. In it, company President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says:

At the heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the GPU. This is clearly an attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business.

Nvidia says the dispute does not affect its chipsets for Intel’s current CPU bus interface; Intel said its hope is that the dispute will not impact the company's other working relationships.

Also see: Nvidia’s fourth quarter dismal; Worse than expected