Texas entity SiliconArts Technology US Inc. has initiated what appears to be its first litigation. In separate Western District of Texas complaints, the Intellectual Discovery Co., Ltd. (ID) subsidiary accuses BOXX Technologies (1:25-cv-00400) and NVIDIA (1:25-cv-00431) of infringing a single US patent generally related to a certain "ray tracing core" through the provision of specified graphics processing units (GPUs).
The asserted patent (9,965,889) issued in May 2018 as the later of two family members sharing estimated priority in May 2009 based on a Korean filing. The original assignees are SiliconArts, Inc. and Industry-Academia Cooperation Foundation of Sejong University, both of South Korea, the former collecting rights in June 2019, assigning them in November 2023 to SiliconArts Technology Inc. of Korea, identified in court disclosures as the direct parent of the plaintiff. SiliconArts Technology assigned the '889 patent, with four other issued US patents, to SiliconArts Technology US (the Texas entity) on February 25, 2025.
The plaintiff was formed (as "SiliconArts Technology Inc") on April 30, 2024, subsequently changing its name (to the current one). It identifies Yoonsang Jung as its director. Court disclosures filed in connection with the current cases also identify WiseFin Inc. as the direct parent of SiliconArts Technology (the Korean parent of the plaintiff), WiseFin identified as a Korean entity wholly owned by ID. Note that in March 2024, Korean entity Value8 Co., Ltd. sued Volvo and disclosed Wisefin Co., Ltd. (with no state of incorporation identified) as its parent entity. The connection between these two WiseFin entities, if any, is unclear.
Per SiliconArts Technology US,
Systems, products, processors, and other Accused Products that employ the patented accelerated ray tracing techniques enable rapid, high-performance graphics rendering and processing that generate higher quality graphics than other systems. Further, the technology provides these benefits at lower power and operational costs. The patented inventions significantly reduce the time and/or computational intensity of generating graphics via ray tracing while achieving renderings that account for realistic light, reflections, shadows, refractions, and other illumination phenomena. These improvements are a quantum leap forward from prior systems and bring realistic, cinema-style graphics to media forms where such benefits were previously prohibited by cost and/or time.
Against BOXX, SiliconArts targets the provision of products that "incorporate graphics processing units with improved ray-tracing accelerators and configures them to perform ray tracing", including data center modules, deskside workstations, and rackmounts, as well as the BOXX Cloud platform. In the NVIDIA complaint, it defines the accused products to include "certain NVIDIA GPUs with RT cores, including at least NVIDIA Turing GPUs (e.g., TU102 and TU106), Ampere GPUs (e.g., GA102 and GA107), Ada Lovelace GPUs (e.g., AD102 and AD107), Blackwell GPUs (e.g., B102), GeForce RTX® 20, 30, 40, and 50 Series GPU products (e.g., GeForce RTX 4060), RTX® GPU products (e.g., RTX 1000 Ada Laptop GPU and RTX 4000 Ada Generation), Quadro" GPU products (e.g., Quadro RTX 6000), and GPU data center products (e.g., L40, L40S, L4 Tensor Core, A2 Tensor Core, A10 Tensor Core, A40 Tensor Core, A60 Tensor Core, T4), among other substantially similar GPUs and products using the same (e.g., laptops, tablets, desktop computers, servers, mobile devices, etc.)".
Intellectual Discovery is a sovereign fund established by the government of Korea in 2010. Other US litigation under the ID umbrella has been filed by entities held by Golden Wave Partners Co., Ltd., including still-active efforts from KAIFI LLC (filed last July against Amazon, coverage here) and TS-Optics Corporation (last September, against Microsoft, here). An ID/Golden Wave campaign filed in March 2023 by Wireless Alliance, LLC (which received funding from Longford Capital) against AT&T (AT&T Mobility), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) ended this past December after settlements were noticed. A fuller consideration of the connections between Golden Wave and ID, as well as their ties to South Korean research institution Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), can be found here.
Jung is listed as the CEO of TS-Optics on that entity's public website. On social media, Jung identifies himself as having served as "Managing Director" with KIPARANG IP Holdings—where he is apparent involved in "Settlement Negotiation", "Valuating Patents", and "Enforcing Patents"—since June 2014; he reports prior positions at Chipworks, Daewoo Electronics (as an assistant manager), and LG Electronics (as a manager).
SiliconArts Technology US is represented by Ciccarelli Law Firm (presumably as local counsel) and Winstead PC (presumably as lead). The BOXX case has been assigned to District Judge Robert Pitman. 3/17, Western District of Texas.
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