ARM loses across the board to Qualcomm
Another setback for ARM. A US court ruled in favour of Nuvia and Qualcomm in a final dispute.
(Image: Florian MĂĽssig / heise medien)
Qualcomm has won another victory in its legal dispute against ARM. A US district court in Delaware has ruled that the acquired start-up Nuvia, founded by former Apple, AMD, and Google engineers, was allowed to pass on its CPU core designs to Qualcomm. It was the last of three points in the lawsuit on which a jury was unable to reach an agreement at the end of 2024. The Nuvia designs are now used in notebook and smartphone processors such as the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
Open point of contention
The license agreement stipulated that Nuvia could only sell its ARM license and ARM technology with ARM's consent. ARM argued a violation because Qualcomm acquired Nuvia without consent.
Qualcomm and Nuvia replied that Qualcomm already held its ARM license and that Nuvia's license had therefore simply expired. The CPU core designs developed by Nuvia, on the other hand, would not constitute ARM technology. Therefore, no approval was necessary.
Back in December, it was stated that an instruction set does not determine the CPU design and only has a minor impact on development. The instruction set primarily influences which instructions the decoder has to understand. ARM had not yet certified the Nuvia core as ARM-compatible at the time of the Qualcomm takeover.
The court followed this reasoning, according to Qualcomm. The Nuvia takeover has been a thorn in ARM's side for years because the licensor is losing revenue due to the change of ownership. Nuvia originally focused on server processors and promised ARM comparatively high license fees per CPU sold. In return, ARM is said to have helped more than usual with development. With Qualcomm's takeover, however, the cost regulation is no longer valid – Qualcomm's license conditions apply.
In a statement to US media such as Bloomberg, ARM writes that it intends to appeal against the judgement.
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Further hearing in March
A counterclaim is currently still pending, in which Qualcomm accuses ARM of several points: “breach of contract, unlawful interference with customer relationships, and ARM's pattern of behavior aimed at hindering innovation and positioning ARM's own products better than those of its long-standing partners.”
Already in the December trial, Qualcomm's management testified that ARM wanted to pit Qualcomm's customers against Qualcomm and withheld information within the license. The trial is scheduled to take place in March 2026.
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