The GPU specialist company thought the fact that it made a lot of money from Intel, when two settled their differences when and where Intel paid 1.5 billion to Nvidia, boded well for Qualcomm and Samsung doing the same thing..

However the administrative law judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled today that Samsung and Qualcomm did not violate U.S. law with respect to importing certain Samsung products into the U.S.

 Judge Thomas Pender issued an initial determination that Samsung and Qualcomm didn’t infringe two NVIDIA patents but that they both did infringe a third patent.  But the third patent wasn’t valid, Nvidia said on its blog.

Now the commission of six commissioners are about to review the initial ruling. Nvidia said that it will prove that the third patent is valid. If Nvidia pulls it off, the ITC would issue an order that would preclude Samsung from importing into the U.S. infringing Samsung mobile devices and smart TVs. A lot is at stake for Samsung so if Nvidia manages to convince the Judges that Samsung did indeed "borrow" some patents a sales ban would mean millions in potential losses. Samsung or Qualcomm would have to settle with Nvidia, the same way Intel did four years ago. 

This means that the battle continues and will probably be a while until this is all over.