SGI Sues ATI for Patent Infringement

Ynsats writes "The Register is reporting that SGI is filing suit against ATI for patent infringement. The suit alleges that ATI violated patent number 6,650,327, "Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering", which was filed in 1998 and granted in 2003, in its Radeon graphics cards. This is coming fast on the heels of AMD's announcement of the intention to buy ATI for $4.2B and it doesn't seem to be swaying AMD's intentions. AMD hopes to finish the takeover by the end of this year. SGI has also issued an ominous statement stating that they have plenty of intellectual property left and there will be more litigation to come."

Comments

And so it begins...

[gfxguy]

The SCO-iffying of sgi. I used to love SGI. I still love their old hardware, from Indys to Reality Engines, from the 4D85 I started on (before they gave fancy names) to the Onyx Infinite Reality that we ran virtual sets on in real time long before PCs could even think about doing this stuff, and the sgi's ran a lot of our live TV well into the PC era, doing a better job than PCs could years after the sgis were released.

But now it's over and sgi has become an office with a few lawyers, and this is what the call emerging from bankrupcy.

Not the first time

[tjkslashdot]

Anyone else remember they gave NVidia the same treatment back in the heady day's of '98? This is nothing new for SGI. "Rattle the cage, and try to stave off the end with another lawsuit." How did that last one work for SGI? Not so well....

Re:Classic case of innovator's dilemma?

[SirKron]

Delete:

• SGI participates in none of it. Dies instead.

Insert:

• AMD gobbles up SGI too as the company is cheaper than the future cost of attorney fees to defend against the patent claims.
• Intel, NVIDIA shit themselves as their graphics cards also infringe the patents.
• Lawsuit proceeds pays for SGI acquisition and more.