ATI Technologies Inc has said that the lawsuit brought against it by Real 3D Inc last week is the action of a competitor that would rather pay than fight. However, a spokesperson for ATI was keen to stress that this was a legitimate business tactic for Real 3D, a Californian firm that is majority owned by Lockheed Martin. The representative wondered about the texture mapping patent that is the core of Real 3D’s case. You have to be curious about a technology that’s nearly ten years old and has changed and mutated over time, he said.
The spokesperson said that ATI, a Canadian company that has a 70% share of the PC graphics chip market according to recent figures, was taking the case seriously but looked at the suit, and the many others currently underway over graphics chips issues, as the nature of the business. He said that because the industry was maturing, there would a natural fall-out in the market, with a reduction in the number of companies designing and manufacturing graphics chips for PCs.
