Arm Ends Legal Efforts To Terminate Qualcomm's License (theregister.com) 15
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.
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.
Justice delayed (Score:1)
"Arm reckons that the matter will reach the courts in the first half of 2026."
How is anyone supposed to do any kind of meaningful future planning when legal matters take years to resolve this way?
Get the facts, render the decision, next case.
There's no need for stuff like this to take months, let alone years.
It's a drag on the economy, if nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
No, but I'd rather it was settled next week instead of next year.
There's no incentive built into the "justice" system to move any of this stuff along. The lawyers get paid by the hour so it's to their advantage to move as slowly as possible, the judges get paid whether they actually do anything of value or not, and everyone else just has to wait on their pleasure.
This is how you get these huge backlogs of cases, because nobody can be bothered to get off of his rear end and do anything.
Then those who have a
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. Let's call in Judge Hector "The Hangman" BMW and have justice Idiocracy-style.
Re: Justice delayed (Score:2)
If corporations are competent then they don't need this much time. They know what they are doing and they have info systems specifically for management of documentation which should be able to produce records timely. If we enforce laws as they are written instead of allowing corporate lawyers to argue that they shouldn't apply even though they knew what the laws were when they advised specific actions then the whole thing will get a lot faster and cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
If it involves two CEOs, then yes.
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking more of a cage match...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It would be nice if Qualcomm now made a real effort to bring RISC-V up to ARM levels of performance. Aside from it being good to have another player working on that, if they don't Chinese companies will surge ahead again and then politicians will try to ban it.
Re: Justice delayed (Score:2)
Now they don't have to.
Re: (Score:3)
Get the facts, render the decision, next case.
There's no need for stuff like this to take months, let alone years.
Cases where a person can sit down, review a few documents, and make a decision aren't the ones that end up in court in the first place.
Maybe you'll have successfully baited a real lawyer into responding, but even without expert input I think it's safe to assume that the "get the facts" step in a lawsuit between two multi-billion dollar corporations means "depose potentially dozens of people and review potentially millions of documents" and the "render the decision" step involves both sides making argument
Re: (Score:2)
I'm obviously not in a position to comment on whether this particular timeline is reasonable, but in general if there isn't sufficient time for each side to research and build up their case, that is also not justice. For big complicated cases involving hundreds or thousands of people (at the companies involved, I don't mean lawyers), that can take quite a while.
Calling off the ARMy (Score:4, Funny)
ARM finds the clue pile (Score:2)