Chipmaker accuses long-time partner Arm of withholding contractually mandated testing tools and leaking critical licensing threats.
Long-standing industry adversaries Qualcomm and Arm Holdings are returning to court in Delaware for a five-day jury trial, marking the latest chapter in their protracted legal feud. Qualcomm accuses Arm of breaching its contract by withholding essential chip-testing tools and alleges that Arm deliberately leaked a 2024 licensing termination threat to the media. Qualcomm claims this public disclosure damaged high-stakes chip supply negotiations with Meta Platforms.
In the US federal court filing, Qualcomm—one of Arm’s largest customers—is seeking permission to withhold royalty payments to Arm for up to five years, a concession potentially worth billions of dollars. However, Judge Maryellen Noreika is currently considering whether to throw out that specific contractual clause, which would limit Qualcomm to seeking smaller financial damages.
Arm, which is majority-owned by SoftBank Group, denies breaching its contract and dismisses Qualcomm’s alleged damages regarding the Meta deal as speculative. Arm has retaliated by arguing that Qualcomm cannot claim damages for media leaks, accusing Qualcomm of previously leaking confidential details about antitrust investigations into Arm to journalists.
Alongside the jury trial, Judge Noreika will preside over a bench trial evaluating whether Arm negotiated in good faith regarding Qualcomm’s access to its next-generation architecture under an agreement running through 2033. While Arm has historically supplied fundamental intellectual property to Android chipmaker Qualcomm and rival Nvidia, its push into designing proprietary chips has turned the IP licensor into a direct commercial competitor to its largest clients.
