Qualcomm defeats Arm’s final legal arguments in licensing trial

Arm this week lost its legal battle with Qualcomm in a multi-faceted license agreement trial with the release of a judgment in Qualcomm’s favor by US district judge Maryellen Noreika.

Last December, a jury in the US District Court for the District of Delaware ruled in favor of Qualcomm and its acquisition, Nuvia, on two of three counts relating to a licensing dispute, and declared a mistrial on a third count.

The final judgment released on Tuesday was a ruling on the third count, and in it, Judge Noreika wrote that neither Qualcomm nor Nuvia had breached an Architecture License Agreement (ALA), as alleged. A Memorandum Opinion relating to the proceedings stated that Arm “contends that it was harmed because its technology was being used in the market without a license, harming its licensing ecosystem.”

Qualcomm, however, in a release termed the verdict a “complete victory,” adding that the court “dismissed the lone remaining claim in Arm’s lawsuit filed against Qualcomm and Nuvia, in which Arm alleged breach of the architecture license agreement (ALA) between Nuvia and Arm. The Court ruled today in favor of Nuvia.”

The ruling, it added, “follows Qualcomm’s victory over Arm during the December 2024 trial in which a jury decided unanimously that Qualcomm did not breach the Nuvia ALA and that Qualcomm’s innovative CPU cores incorporating technology obtained in the Nuvia acquisition were properly licensed under Qualcomm’s own ALA.”

Ann Chaplin, general counsel at Qualcomm, stated in the release, “this decision follows Qualcomm’s December 2024 jury trial win and is a full and final judgment in Qualcomm’s favor. Our right to innovate prevailed in the case and we hope Arm will return to fair and competitive practices in dealing with the Arm ecosystem.”

An Arm spokesperson, however, said in an emailed statement that the company “remains confident in its position in its ongoing dispute with Qualcomm and has filed an appeal seeking to overturn the judgment.”

Anshel Sag, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said, “[even though] Qualcomm believes this issue is settled, Arm clearly does not, as the company has already filed for an appeal. This may be partially because Qualcomm countersued Arm last year, before the big court case and jury trial occurred.” 

He said that ultimately, he “wished the two companies would have buried the hatchet late last year, but both want to keep pursuing this back and forth until all avenues are entirely exhausted, whether it’s the countersuit or the continuous appeals.”

Sag added, “while I don’t believe we will ever know all the facts of this case, it has fundamentally changed the relationship between Qualcomm and Arm, and possibly the broader Arm ecosystem. These court battles are not good for either company, so I had always hoped that things would be settled before they ever went to court.”

Alvin Nguyen, senior analyst at Forrester Research, viewed the court’s ruling as a decision that “ended up where it was expected to end up,” and said Arm’s challenge in appealing is that “obviously, any judge is going to try to do as much as they can [during a trial] to make sure that their judgment stays final.”

He pointed out that, for now, Qualcomm is comfortable working with Arm technology for its proven technology. “They have already invested the time in it and their incentive would be to stay with Arm rather than move away from it,” he said.

There is another option, said Nguyen, namely RISC-V, “[but] that involves going to a whole new ecosystem.” However, he added, if the legal proceedings “get past the point of aggravation for Qualcomm and hurts them in terms of credibility and licensing, then there is another player now that they can go to, and it would not be a huge lift to migrate to it.”