ARM to cancel Qualcomm’s design license, gives 60-day notice

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ARM to cancel Qualcomm’s design license in 6 weeks 



According to Bloomberg, ARM has sent a notice to Qualcomm that their license to use ARM intellectual property to design chips will be canceled. This follows a dispute from 2022, where ARM alleged trademark infringement. ARM is now giving Qualcomm eight weeks to resolve the issue.

The contract in question allows Qualcomm to design their own chips, including mobile and laptop chips, based on ARM architecture. Given Qualcomm’s market reach, this agreement is tied to the sale of millions of processors annually, which reportedly accounts for $39 billion in revenue and could cause significant damages if it is terminated.

More importantly, the dispute seems to center around Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia. Qualcomm claims that by acquiring the company, they also inherited Nuvia’s license from ARM. ARM disagrees and wants the terms to be renegotiated. Qualcomm has just announced its Elite series for phones, featuring Nuvia’s Oryon cores.



Qualcomm has already responded to these claims, stating that they are anti-competitive and meant to disrupt the upcoming trial in December.
 

“This is more of the same from ARM – more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license. With a trial fast approaching in December, Arm’s desperate ploy appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless. We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed. Arm’s anticompetitive conduct will not be tolerated.”
— Qualcomm

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