A startup backed by Yahoo’s co-founder and Intel’s chief technology officer is suing Nvidia and Microsoft for allegedly infringing on patents on key innovations in its artificial intelligence chips and participating in a buying cartel that allegedly seeks to artificially drive down the price of the technology.
Texas-based Xockets said in a new lawsuit that Nvidia infringed on its patented data processing unit (DPU) technology, which helps make cloud infrastructure more efficient by accelerating data-intensive workloads. Xockets said the chip giant inherited the infringement through its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox. It claims Mellanox initially infringed Xockets’ patent after it publicly demonstrated its DPU technology at a 2015 conference.
Xockets claims that Nvidia’s three DPUs (BlueField, ConnectX and NVLink Switch) are based on Xockets’ patented technology. The startup also accused Microsoft of infringing its patents, claiming that as an Nvidia customer, Microsoft “has access to NVIDIA’s infringed GPU-enabled server computer systems and artificial intelligence components.”
Xockets says it made Nvidia aware of the alleged infringement – it claims the startup’s founder and board member Parin Dalal raised the issue with Nvidia’s vice president of DPU operations in February 2022. “Effective infringement” strategy, which basically boils down to infringement now and letting lawyers handle the rest.
“Xockets accuses Nvidia of pursuing ‘efficient infringement’ tactics”
Xockets is also accusing Nvidia of monopolizing the market for GPU servers for AI and participating with Microsoft in a buying cartel through an organization called RPX, a company Xockets says was “formed at the request of Big Tech companies to enable and create buyers’ cartels for Intellectual Property.” Xockets claims that RPX enables members such as Nvidia and Microsoft to boycott innovative products such as Xockets in order to drive down prices below what each company would have negotiated on its own. Xockets claims that through the so-called cartel, Microsoft and Nvidia are able to “monopolize GPU-enabled generative AI by controlling the devices and platforms required to access this functionality.”
Xockets is seeking damages for the alleged infringement and asking the court to order the companies to stop violating its patents and antitrust laws. Intellectual property lawyer Robert Cote, an investor and board member of Xockets, said that even though it faces two of the largest companies in the country edge Xockets has “enough money to fight Goliath.”
Dalal is a current Google employee and a principal engineer for machine learning and artificial intelligence, although Google does not appear to have a formal role in the lawsuit. Cote said he could not comment on Google. Nvidia and Google declined to comment. Microsoft and RPX did not immediately respond.
