Imagine if VIA actually won its case against Apple?!

VIA announced a lawsuit against Apple last week, claiming that the company has infringed three patents. VIA seeks the ban of the sale of Apple products, including the iPod, iPhone and iPad. It sounds far fetched, but what if it actually happened? After all, Apple was successful in banning Samsung Galaxy Pad sales in Germany recently.

Market watchers are tipping that VIA actually has a strong case against Apple. Digitimes reports " ... that VIA Technologies has a good chance of winning its recently filed patent lawsuit against Apple."

The idea that a US district court would actually legally ban the sale of Apple's flagship products is rather eye-opening. What is more likely is that if Apple's lawyers became convinced that a guilty verdict was inevitable, a very costly deal would be made with VIA behind closed doors.

The CEO of VIA is the husband of the owner of HTC, a smartphone company that has been sued many times over by Apple ... not that I'm suggesting this is some sort of revenge lawsuit, especially since most analysts agree that VIA has a legitimate and strong case ... it's just an interesting observation.

VIA sues Apple

VIA has accused Apple of violating 2 patents. They are:

· US Patent No. 6253312, Method and apparatus for double operand load
· US Patent Nos. 6253311 & 6754810, Instruction set for bi-directional conversion and transfer of integer and floating point data.
 
Apparently these patents are used, without license by Apple, in the Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod and Apple TV devices. Since many of these devices have been around for years, it makes we wonder why VIA have chosen now as the time to bring a lawsuit against Apple.
 
VIA joins a huge crowd of tech companies that take Apple to court over alleged patent infringements. Those companies are often counter-sued by Apple.

VIA Labs' USB 3.0 host controllers, certified

Both the VL800 and VL801 USB 3.0 host controllers have been certified by the USB Implementers Forum. The VL800, which is a 4 port host controller, and the VL801 which is a 2 port SuperSpeed host controller, are now certified to work with compliant USB 3.0 devices. Expect to see these chips drop up on everything from tablets, to notebooks, to desktops.

VIA Labs shows the new VL811 USB 3.0 Hub Controller in action

Following on from their Press Release last week, VIA Labs have released a video explains the difference between the VL810 and the VL811, and also shows it charging a device.

New VIA Labs second gen USB 3.0 controller charges devices faster than ever

The VIA Labs VL810 was the world's first USB 3.0 4 port hub controller. The second generation design, the VL811 ads a new feature called a Charging Downstream Port or CDP. A CDP port can charge a BCS-compatible device three times faster than regular USB 3.0 devices. In fact you can use the device at full speed whilst charging.

"The VIA Labs VL811 enables a single downstream port of a host computer or another hub to simultaneously interface with multiple USB devices. The VIA Labs VL811 hub controller supports the higher transfer rates of the USB 3.0 specification, allowing maximum data transfer rates of up to 5Gbps, or ten times the maximum throughput available to USB 2.0 based devices, while remaining fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 hosts, hubs, and devices. In addition to rapid transfers, the VIA Labs VL811 also allows for rapid charging of BCS compatible devices through the CDP feature."

Find out more on the VIA Labs site.