$QCOM (-0,83%) . $ARM (+0,36%)
The lawsuit between chip manufacturer Qualcomm and architecture design company Arm has come to an end: A court in Delaware has acquitted Qualcomm of allegations of violating Arm's licensing agreements, as reported by Bloomberg and others. The background to this are accusations by Arm that Qualcomm should have negotiated a new license agreement with the takeover of Nuvia.
At the time, Nuvia had negotiated a technology license (TLA) with Arm for the use of finished IP blocks (intellectual property) and an architecture license (ALA). This enabled Nuvia to develop its Arm CPU cores (Oryon), which Qualcomm uses in its Snapdragon X and, more recently, Snapdragon 8 chips following the takeover.
Qualcomm itself received technology and architecture licenses from Arm, albeit on different terms. As a start-up, Nuvia had received cheaper licenses, but the royalties per chip sold were higher. According to Arm's argumentation, Qualcomm would have had to negotiate new licenses after the takeover of Nuvia. Qualcomm had also applied for such a license transfer, but wanted to keep Nuvia's license terms - which Arm rejected.
Jury reached a partial agreement
At the end of the negotiations, Arm made Qualcomm two offers: Either the Oryon developers would no longer work on Arm designs for two years or Qualcomm would pay $135 million for new licenses. Qualcomm subsequently broke off negotiations.
After two days of discussions, in which there was apparently a stalemate in the meantime, the jury was able to agree that Arm's claims against Qualcomm were unjustified. The jurors could not agree on the question of whether Nuvia had breached the license agreement with Arm. According to the presiding judge Maryelle Noreika, this can be renegotiated at a later date.
https://www.golem.de/news/chips-qualcomm-verstoesst-nicht-gegen-arm-lizenzabkommen-2412-191941.html
