nVidia gaat 3dfx aanklagen wegens het gebruiken van patenten van nVidia. nVidia eist in deze zaak dat 3dfx geen grafische kaarten meer mag: maken, verkopen en implementeren! Dit zou dus inhouden dat er geen enkele voodoo kaart meer op de markt verkocht mag worden en dus eigenlijk het einde van 3dfx... nVidia has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 3dfx in the U.S. District Court for the northern district of California, pitting the top two graphics chip manufacturers against each other in a legal facedown. The lawsuit involves the nVidia patents listed below and requests an injunction restraining 3dfx from manufacturing, selling or importing infringing graphics chip and card products--including the Voodoo3, Voodoo4, Voodoo5 and the VSA-100 line of products--as well as fiscal damages. The lawsuit alleges that 3dfx's graphics chip and card products, which are used to accelerate 3D graphics on personal computers, infringe on the following U.S. patents:

- Register array for utilizing burst mode transfer on local bus.

- Apparatus adapted to be joined between the IO bus and IO devices which translates addre es furnished through an application program.

- DMA controller translates virtual IO device addre received from application program command to IO device addre of IO device on device bus.

- Method and apparatus for accelerating the transfer of graphical images.

-Method and apparatus for accelerating the rendering of images.

3dfx was unable to comment prior to the publication of this report.

Ik heb zelf geen 3dfx kaart, maar het zou volgens mij niet goed zijn als nVidia dit zou winnen... Monopolie, here I come is het dan voor nVidia...