Listen, I’m only human and I love a big business slap fight about as much as the next guy. Unfortunately, these legal bouts sometimes end with a bit of an anticlimax, and that brings us to the current state of British semiconductor design company Arm’s throwdown with Qualcomm.
Rather than keep fighting, Arm has decided to stop trying to terminate Qualcomm’s license to produce chips based on its technology (via The Register). This means that Qualcomm is free to continue producing its Arm-based range of laptop chips, the Snapdragon X CPU line, thereby bringing some closure to a legal dispute that’s been raging since August 2022. Alas, there are no knockouts here—I should’ve stuck to watching pro-wrestling.
Specifically, Arm was trying to terminate Qualcomm’s architecture license agreement (ALA) which, if successful, would’ve meant game over for Snapdragon X and potentially large numbers of Microsoft’s Copilot+ AI PCs as well. But according to Qualcomm’s most recent quarterly financial report, Arm is withdrawing its most recent legal challenge and, as of January 8, “has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm ALA, while reserving its rights pending the outcome of the ongoing litigation.”
To briefly recap, this all began with the startup Nuvia, which was acquired by Qualcomm back in 2021. Nuvia had previously signed an ALA with Arm, allowing the startup to design its own CPU cores that would be compatible with Arm’s tech. Nuvia’s whole deal was attempting to build ARM-based server chips, though its expertise would be used elsewhere in the end. Qualcomm is also an Arm ALA licensee, and decided it would quite like Nuvia’s CPU designs for its own integrated Snapdragon chips, hence the startup scooping.
Arm felt that sharing these designs based on their tech without their say-so seemed like a breach of both Nuvia and Qualcomm’s ALAs. This, among a number of unsuccessful legal challenges over the years, has most recently resulted in Arm throwing all of its toys out of the pram to issue Qualcomm with a 60-day notice in October 2024. In January of this year, Arm notified Qualcomm it would be withdrawing this notice. Anticlimactic, right?
This doesn’t mean the dust has settled by any stretch of the imagination though. As previously referenced, litigation is still ongoing from a court case brought before a jury back in December 2024. Arm had argued a massive loss in revenue, but the jury found that Qualcomm had not violated its ALA as claimed (via The Register).
According to a regulatory filing by Arm, both sides are still seeking to clarify exactly where they stand in light of the jury’s verdict through post-trial motions—with another legal rumble potentially on the cards in the future. Time will tell.