The existing agreement has allowed Qualcomm to create its own chips — including its Snapdragon products — based on standards owned by Arm
The ongoing legal battle between Arm and Qualcomm took another turn this week when the former reportedly took first steps to terminate a license allowing the latter to use its IP to design chips. The existing agreement has allowed Qualcomm to create its own chips — including its Snapdragon products — based on standards owned by Arm.
According to reports, Arm issued a 60-day notice to cancel an architectural license that allows Qualcomm to use its instruction set architecture (ISA) to design chips. The move could result in Qualcomm’s sudden inability to sell hundreds of millions of processors the power the majority of Android smartphones, a development that would have a big impact on the smartphone chip industry as a whole.
In a lawsuit filed two years ago, Arm accused Qualcomm and its subsidiary Nuvia — which it acquired in 2021 — of trademark infringement and of breaching license agreements. Arm then terminated these licenses, forcing Qualcomm and Nuvia destroy any ARM-based technology developed under the licenses.
When it comes to the latest development, though, a Qualcomm representative told Bloomberg that the U.S. chipmaker is “confident” that its “rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed” and that the U.K. company is just looking to “disrupt the legal process.” And to Reuters, Qualcomm said: “This is more of the same from Arm — more unfounded threats designed to strong-arm a long-time partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license.”
Arm has reportedly declined to comment.
