Arm Ends Legal Efforts To Terminate Qualcomm's License

Arm has dropped its attempt to terminate Qualcomm's Architecture License Agreement (ALA), allowing Qualcomm to continue developing and producing Arm-compatible chips for PCs, smartphones, and servers. 'The Brit biz had sought to end that license in a lawsuit it brought against Qualcomm in 2022,' notes The Register. 'That suit is rooted in Qualcomm's 2021 acquisition of a startup called Nuvia, which was co-founded by the brains behind Apple's custom processors and had signed an architecture license agreement (ALA) with Arm that allowed it to design its own Arm-compatible CPU cores.' From the report: On Wednesday, Qualcomm's latest quarterly financial report [PDF] revealed Arm had indicated on January 8, 2025 it was no longer seeking to kill off Qualcomm's ALA. During Qualcomm's Q1 2025 earnings conference call with Wall Street, CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed Arm 'has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm Architecture License Agreement. We're excited to continue to develop performance leading, world-class products that benefit consumers worldwide that include our incredible Oryon custom CPUs.'

On the other side of the fence, Arm noted in a regulatory filing [PDF] that post-trial motions had been filed on both sides to clarify the legal situation following the jury's verdicts, and a new trial may be sought. On its own latest quarterly earnings call, which like Qualcomm's took place on Wednesday, Arm's CFO Jason Child was asked about the impact of the case. He said Arm's revenue forecasts assumed the biz was 'not going to prevail in that lawsuit,' and that it expected to continue receiving payments from Qualcomm, which licenses various technologies from Arm and doesn't just hold an ALA.

'The primary reason for the lawsuit very much was around defending our IP and that's important,' Child said. 'But from a financial perspective, we had assumed that we'll continue to be receiving royalties at basically the same rates that they've been paying for in the past and will continue to pay.' Qualcomm continues to pursue another case against Arm, alleging the UK outfit didn't honor some of its contractual obligations. Arm reckons that matter will reach the courts in the first half of 2026.

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