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A prolonged licensing dispute between Qualcomm and British chipmaker Arm escalated this week with Arm moving to cancel the deal it has with Qualcomm.
As Bloomberg reports, Arm sent Qualcomm a 60-day notice of cancellation for an architectural license agreement that—if executed—could throw the chip and smartphone industries into disarray. The license lets Qualcomm create chips based on standards owned by Arm.
Qualcomm tells Bloomberg that the cancellation "appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless." The two are set to face off at trial in December to resolve a case that dates back two years, when Arm sued Qualcomm over licenses related to chip designs from Nuvia, a company Qualcomm acquired in 2021.
Nuvia was also an Arm licensee and Arm took issue with Qualcomm using Nuvia designs created with Arm technology without paying up. Arm terminated the Nuvia licenses in March 2022, but Qualcomm continued to use them, according to Arm. "Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm’s consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm’s license agreements," Arm said at the time.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts suggest the cancellation is a legal manuever that may end up "in a negotiated license granting the chipmaker rights to customize Arm architecture, but at higher royalty rate than Nuvia had been paying.”
This comes as Qualcomm is hosting its annual Snapdragon Summit. Among the announcements there is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, which features custom-designed cores in the CPU, GPU, and NPU to dramatically improve speed, efficiency, and AI for next-gen flagship smartphones. That CPU, known as Oryon, is based in part on tech from Nuvia.