Qualcomm Sued by Softbank’s Arm Over License Breach After Nuvia’s Acquisition

Qualcomm, the US-based semiconductor firm, and its acquired chip design agency Nuvia has been sued by Arm, a chip expertise agency owned by Softbank Group, on Wednesday. Arm has raised allegations towards each Qualcomm and Nuvia over breach of license agreements and trademark infringement. Nuvia, based by former Apple chip architects, was acquired by Qualcomm final 12 months in a $1.4 billion (practically Rs. 11,140) deal excluding working capital and different changes. The transfer got here as a problem to rivals Intel and Superior Micro Units (AMD).

In keeping with a blog post on the corporate’s web site, Arm is in search of an injunction in its lawsuit towards Qualcomm. If accepted, Qualcomm could have the contractual obligation to destroy designs that had been developed below Nuvia‘s license agreements with Arm.

The lawsuit has been filed in the USA District Court docket for the District of Delaware. In keeping with Arm, Qualcomm has transferred Nuvia’s licenses with out approval from Arm as “a regular restriction below the corporate’s license agreements.”

In the meantime, as per a Reuters’ report, Qualcomm’s Basic Counsel, Ann Chaplin, has said, “Arm’s criticism ignores the truth that Qualcomm has broad, well-established license rights masking its custom-designed CPU’s, and we’re assured these rights shall be affirmed.”

To recall, Qualcomm acquired Nuvia final 12 months in a $1.4 billion deal. The corporate needed to design computing cores completely different from commonplace Arm designs, utilized by its rivals comparable to MediaTek.

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