Qualcomm accuses Arm of anticompetitive conduct as its license is terminated due to ‘repeated material breaches of Arm’s license agreement’

Shortly after the report about the cancellation of Qualcomm’s Arm architecture license agreement (ALA) was published, the companies involved traded further accusations. Arm has confirmed that it decided to terminate Qualcomm’s ALA to ‘protect the unparalleled ecosystem,’ whereas Qualcomm accused Arm of anticompetitive conduct.

“Following Qualcomm’s repeated material breaches of Arm’s license agreement, Arm is left with no choice but to take formal action requiring Qualcomm to remedy its breach or face termination of the agreement,” a statement by Arm reads. “This is necessary to protect the unparalleled ecosystem that Arm and its highly valued partners have built over more than 30 years. Arm is fully prepared for the trial in December and remains confident that the Court will find in Arm’s favor.”

Arm gave Qualcomm a 60-day notice to comply with the requirements, or face termination of its Arm architecture license, which enables Qualcomm to create custom chips using Arm’s instruction set architecture. If the issue is not resolved, Arm will require Qualcomm to stop selling several products, including Snapdragon X Elite processors for client PCs that contain Oryon general-purpose processor cores originally developed by Nuvia (now part of Qualcomm).

This action follows a legal dispute in which Arm accuses Qualcomm and Nuvia of breaching licensing agreements and misusing its trademark after Qualcomm acquired Nuvia in 2021. The trial is set to begin this December. Arm claims that Qualcomm failed to renegotiate the ALA terms post-acquisition and is demanding the destruction of Nuvia’s pre-merger designs which are de-facto on the market already. Qualcomm, however, argues that its existing Arm architecture license already covers Nuvia’s work. That said, Qualcomm accuses Arm of anti-competitive misconduct.

“This is more of the same from Arm — more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license,” a statement by Qualcomm reads. “With a trial fast approaching in December, Arm’s desperate ploy appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless. We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed. Arm’s anticompetitive conduct will not be tolerated.”