Apple, Nintendo, Sony sued for patent infringement
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jul 7, 2009 at 10:09am
Another day, another lawsuit. Shared Memory Graphics is accusing Apple, Nintendo and Sony of patent infringement. The California-based company alleges that two patented graphic accelerators are currently used in Apple iPods, Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PSP/PS2, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The lawsuit was filed July 2 in an Arkansas Federal District Court. The two patents, originally owned by Alliance Semiconductor, describe ways in which microprocessors fine-tune graphics by balancing the flow of data from various sources.
One disputed patent describes a “shared memory graphics accelerator system.” According to the USPTO, performance is enhanced “because display data retrieval from the on-chip frame buffer is much faster than from an external frame buffer…and the DRAM timing constraints are reduced.” The accelerator also allows display memory size to expand by adding external memory to accommodate large displays. In addition, frame buffer space can be distributed among several integrated solutions, “thereby increasing both the display bandwidth and the parallel processing capability between the CRT display and the CPU.”
The patents were originally awarded to Alliance Semiconductor, but were subsequently sold to Shared Memory Graphics. The latter is reportedly demanding unspecified monetary damages, along with an injunction to prevent further infringement.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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