Nvidia yesterday announced that it has filed a countersuit against Intel, which it accuses of violating the companies' four-year-old cross license agreement.

The countersuit is a response to a filing by Intel last month in the Delaware court, in which Intel alleges that the chipset license agreement does not extend to Intel's future generation CPUs with integrated memory controllers, such as its Nehalem processor.

Nvidia believes the contract covers these future CPUs, but Intel thinks otherwise, and is seeking an injunction against Nvidia. Intel took a license to Nvidia’s rich portfolio of 3D, GPU, and other computing patents, and in a tit for tat move, Nvidia now wants to terminate its rights stemming from the cross license agreement.

"We must defend ourselves and the rights we negotiated for when we provided Intel access to our valuable patents," Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said in a statement. "Intel's actions are intended to block us from making use of the very license rights that they agreed to provide."

Nvidia claims the dispute was initiated by Intel, and that it has tried to resolve it peacefully for the past year.

You can find Nvidia's press release here.