Arm awaits verdict in high-stakes licensing suit against Qualcomm

Arm is waiting to see if it has won a battle over licensing of its microprocessor designs to Qualcomm that has cast doubt over the immediate future of some of the chip maker’s products.

The jury in the US District Court for the District of Delaware spent the week listening to arguments in the protracted and increasingly rancorous licensing dispute between Arm and Qualcomm and all that’s left is to hear their verdict.

The verdict, expected on Friday, could be hugely significant, not only for the parties involved but for the maze of other companies that have built their product development around their technology.

It’s an extraordinary clash between companies that until as recently as 2021 seemed like firm allies.

The legal case started with Qualcomm’s 2021 acquisition of Nuvia, designer of the Phoenix datacenter chip, which used Arm’s v8.7-A instruction set. Under Qualcomm, the Phoenix was reinvented as the Oryon chip, the CPU core of a more general microprocessor used inside the company’s Snapdragon system-on-a-chip (SoC).

Importantly, the royalty that Qualcomm agreed to pay under its Architecture License Agreement (ALA) with Arm was lower than that of Nuvia. Qualcomm believed this more favorable deal should apply to Nuvia development going forward because most of its subsequent Snapdragon development was done after the acquisition.

Arm disagreed and argued that Qualcomm should pay the rate agreed with Nuvia. According to court testimony by Arm CEO Rene Haas this week, the lower royalty would cause a drop in revenue of $50 million. Failing to reach an agreement with Qualcomm, the company decided to sue, the first time it has taken such action against a customer since its founding in 1990.

This is where things became a bit muddy. Why did Arm decide to sue over a relatively small sum, and why did Qualcomm refuse to concede? This week in court a wide range of arguments and counter arguments were laid out, mostly that each company believed the other was trying to sabotage its business.

Make Qualcomm great again

As it attempts to diversify away from relying on mobile chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC platform is seen as critical for its future. This, it hopes, will allow it to take on Intel and AMD in the general microprocessor market while integrating the new-fangled AI capabilities important to the PC sector.

In October, Arm cancelled Qualcomm’s license to the Nuvia ALA. It also demanded the destruction of Nuvia designs developed prior to the merger. Clearly, a verdict in favor of Arm would put Qualcomm in a tight corner, and also a who’s who of tech companies — Microsoft, Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung — currently using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon designs.

This week, Qualcomm put forward an alternative view to explain Arm’s motivations. According to Qualcomm’s lawyers, Arm harbors ambitions to develop competing chips of its own, making it a direct competitor to Qualcomm. Evidence for this remains circumstantial, but to back this up Qualcomm claimed that Arm at one point misled it into disbanding its development team.

Stop being cheap

A difficulty for outsiders is untangling exactly what is really at issue and whether there’s more to this than meets the eye. According to Arm it’s about licensing agreements and the fees that arise from them. It believes Qualcomm used its IP in Nuvia-originated IP and should pay what Nuvia agreed and stop being cheap.

Qualcomm’s argument seems to be that this is a shakedown. And yet there seem to be deeper currents. Perhaps they see each as competitors in the longer term, and the battle is competitive jockeying.

Notably, Qualcomm was a major opponent to Nvidia’s proposed 2021 takeover of Arm, abandoned in the face of regulatory hurdles, and even suggested investing in the UK company. For its part, Arm upset Qualcomm by contacting dozens of its customers to inform them of the termination of the Nuvia license. Each round of conflict deepened the antipathy.

It’s the sort of dispute that happens all the time in the tech industry, a sector built on patents and cross-licensing of IP. But what was highly unusual about this dispute is that it wasn’t resolved without going to court, a hugely risky situation for both parties should they lose.

On the surface, it has never been a battle of equals: Qualcomm’s annual revenue is 10 to 15 times that of Arm’s. That said, since Arm listed on the New York Stock Exchange, its value has soared, bringing its market capitalization much closer to that of the US company.

Arm is important for its size and Qualcomm is large and ambitious. Each would like the other’s crown. Both are angry. What’s not yet clear is whether the verdict of a Delaware courthouse, including outright victory, will deliver what either company wants.