NVidia To Fight 3Dfx

In the 3D accelerator market, nVidia is apparently the company to go after. Yesterday, 3Dfx Interactive sent out a release alleging that the company infringed on its multi-texturing patent in nVidia's latest RIVA TNT chip and has filed a suit with the US District Court in Northern California.

NVidia has yet to receive the legal documents outlining the suit but says that it will "vigorously defend itself" against the lawsuit and claims that it has not infringed on any patent.

"In light of recent admissions by 3Dfx, we can only speculate that they are turning to legal remedies in an attempt to stay profitable, rather than addressing their core market issues of channel saturation for older products and uncertain demand for their latest product," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of nVidia. "While we have not yet been served with the complaint, nVidia has examined the patent and believes there is no infringement by the RIVA TNT. NVidia intends to defend itself against this nuisance litigation."

The timing of the suit has been speculated at being more of a way of making bad press for the company since nVidia is getting ready to offer stock on the market soon. Since legally nVidia can't talk about the company right now in its quiet period before the stock offering, it could not talk about any of its internal goings-on. 3Dfx recently reported that it has had a slowdown with people buying 3Dfx products but reported that it still made a profit for the quarter (saying that the settled lawsuit with Sega helped). NVidia has definitely made waves in the 3D market and has been up and coming since its popular RIVA 128 product. With the second-generation TNT product, nVidia has performed on par and in some cases ahead of 3Dfx.

We'll see what happens.