SGI forces Dell to testify in suit against AMD

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After the initial salvo of stories of SGI suing ATI, all has been quiet as both sides went through the discovery process. The Inquirer has published a story revealing that a reluctant Dell has been dragged into the litigation. Dell apparently wanted to stay out of the legal fracas, but has been served a subpoena to testify in the case. No word on when the trial will occur.

Since it has been over a year, a little recap is in order.

On October 23, 2006, just six days after emerging from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, SGI announced that it was suing ATI for patent infringement. The relevant patent is Patent No. 6,650,327, which was filed in June 1998 and awarded to SGI in November 2003. The patent covers a “display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering.” SGI has licensed the technology to ATI’s competitors.

What makes this interesting that SGI was once dependent on ATI for its graphics cards.