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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (8403)	10/17/1998 12:30:00 AM
From: Simon Cardinale	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Thanks for the detailed response James: Claim 1 was indeed the patent '279. It looked like an overview of the patent, maybe the abstract?. What I meant was I didn't understand if nVidia was saying (in the particular passage) if they weren't in violation of the patent or if the patent was too vague to apply to anyone. I suspect it was the latter. I probably should have xeroxed the whole denial of the preliminary injunction. I didn't have much change, and it was .20/page... The "indefiniteness" argument nVidia tried didn't seem to be persuading the judge. She said that it might apply to the digital analog converter (because of something S3's expert witness said) but she seemed persuaded that an "expert in the art" would know what the patent was referring to without the specifics of how a VGA controller, RAM, and possibly the DAC worked. Remember that the standards for denying a preliminary injunction (particularly for a single product company) are pretty low. I got the impression she didn't put much faith in the indefiniteness thing, but she wasn't positive that it didn't apply to every part of the patent. So I might turn the question back to you having seen more of the material...does it seem likely that the TDFX spec sheet was presented as an exhibit to show that those skilled in the art would readily understand the claim or perhaps something else. They had experts for that stuff... I don't know. Only the judge's ruling was there. All the actual arguments were under seal, except the parts the judge quoted. My impression from those few quotes were that (assuming she quoted nVidia's best) S3 has a decent case. They were things like the definition of "video information" versus "video display information" and whether the chip data flow diagrams showed one path or two seperate paths. Superficially the diagrams (S3's and nVidia's) did look similar. You could look them both up on the web if you like, one in the ibm patent database (I assume) and the other was an nvidia website showing the way the riva 128 functions. I would doubt that "motive of the plaintiff" would have a lot to do with whether the defendant would be allowed discovery, but it is also my expectation that NVidia would be entitled to discovery in any event, to at least determine what S3's understanding of the broadness of the patent is and when and how they determined that broadness. This was my initial reaction, too. However we need to remember that this was part of a discussion of whether a preliminary injunction would be granted. If nVidia could establish that S3 was bringing suit as a tactical maneuver to take out a competitor without even needing to prove the patent was infringed... All of the "they purchased this" and "they're just sticking it to us" stuff was part of the argument that they hadn't done S3 damage which would permit a preliminary injunction. I never saw a clear argument for why nVidia needed discovery of S3. I guess S3 thinks it applies in this case, which is the one nVidia ought to be concerned with, not what S3 might try and do with it later. Damn, I should have xeroxed the damn thing. Still, I don't think the particulars have that much bearing for 3Dfx. The jury trial is way in the future, and the details of the arguments will be different. Simon