3dfx Sues Creative Over Glide Code in Unified

3dfx has taken Creative to court. The suit, filed today in federal court for the Northern District of California against Creative Labs and Creative Technology, claims copyright infringement and breach of contract over Unified, Creative’s recently announced technology for running Glide-only games on its TNT and TNT2 based accelerators. According to 3dfx, Creative broke a licensing agreement by building 3dfx Glide source code into Unified; that license forbids using or modifying any 3dfx source code to work with non-3dfx acceleration hardware. 3dfx is also chasing Creative Technology for unpaid bills on 3dfx products.

Glide is the API 3dfx built to give developers a simple, fast path to 3D games running on its own accelerators, and the catalog at stake is not small: nearly 200 titles support Glide today, with close to 100 more in development. TNT2 owners hoping Unified would unlock that library should probably not hold their breath while this one grinds through the courts.