The GPU maker played itself as the underdog in a case against Qualcomm and Samsung – particularly as it had not really played the patent troll card before. Cynics thought that Nvidia was trying to squeeze a bit of extra cash from the mobile market, but people don’t usually like patent trolls.

However when Nvidia sued Samsung, Samsung sued it back and asked the ITC to block NVIDIA’s products from being sold due to alleged patent infringement. It was then that it all went pair shaped.

The ITC first ruled that Nvida’s patents were invalid and now says that Samsung’s were. This means rather than cracking open the champers this crimbo, Nvidia is having to check its bank account to see if it can pay off the people it sued.

If it does not reach an agreement with Samsung, it could find its products banned from the US, something that is not good for one’s bottom line.

Nvidia might be hoping that the ITC will change its mind when the case is reviewed several months from now. However that sort of thing is rather rare. Still one of the patents that it infringed expires in 2016, meaning that if the review doesn’t go in their favour, products that use said patent would only be banned for several months.

The main question that Nvidia about the whole incident is “what was Nvidia thinking?” The whole Apple versus Samsung thing proved to the tech industry that engaging any patent wars is a complete waste of time. Technology companies are a little like the superpowers in the cold war. They all have dossers of patents which they never take out unless someone sues them first. Nvidia has patents, but no-where as many as the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung, and it could not survive any first wave of writs.

Apple also discovered that even with an iTC ruling, it was never going to take a tech product off the shelves. By the time the court case was all done and dusted, the product which you are suing over is out-of-date and no longer sold.

Now Nvidia will have to appeal and the case will end up costing a much more than it could have hoped to have squeezed out of Samsung.  To make matters worse, the iTC will have taken way some of the weapons from its own portfolio which it could have collected money from licence fees from.  

If only AMD had got Zen out, Nvidia might have had some real big headaches about now.