from Hacker News

Qualcomm wins licensing fight with Arm over chip designs

by my123 on 12/20/24, 9:28 PM with 129 comments

  • by jasoneckert on 12/20/24, 10:30 PM

    By the end of Day 3, it seemed quite clear that Qualcomm's legal team and position was far ahead of ARM's. I feel the following snippet sums up the whole week:

    "Qualcomm’s counsel turned Arm’s Piano analogy on its head. Arm compared its ISA to a Piano Keyboard design during the opening statement and used it throughout the trial. It claimed that no matter how big or small the Piano is, the keyboard design remains the same and is covered by its license. Qualcomm’s counsel extended that analogy to show how ridiculous it would be to say that because you designed the keyboard, you own all the pianos in the world. Suggesting that is what Arm is trying to do."

    Source: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3...

  • by walterbell on 12/21/24, 2:33 AM

    For details beyond Bloomberg's three paragraph summary:

    https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-1...

    > Arm’s opening statement.. presented with a soft, almost victim-like demeanor. Qualcomm’s statement was more assertive and included many strong facts (e.g., Arm internal communications saying Qualcomm has “Bombproof” ALA). Testimonials were quite informative and revealed many interesting facts, some rumored and others unknown (e.g. Arm considered a fully vertically integrated approach).

    https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-2...

    > The most important discussion was whether processor design and RTL are a derivative of Arm’s technology.. This assertion of derivative seems an overreach and should put a chill down the spine of every Arm customer, especially the ones that have ALA, which include NXP, Infineon, TI, ST Micro, Microchip, Broadcom, Nvidia, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Apple, and Marvell. No matter how much they innovate in processor design and architecture, it can all be deemed Arm’s derivative and, hence, its technology.

    https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3...

    https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-4...

  • by LeFantome on 12/20/24, 10:14 PM

    Wow, this has been settled already? I mean, I am sure ARM will appeal.

    ARM did massive damage to their ecosystem for nothing. There will for sure be consequences of suing your largest customer.

    Lots of people that would have defaulted to licensing designed off ARM for whatever chips they have planned will now be considering RISC-V instead. ARM just accelerated the timeline for their biggest future competitor. Genius.

  • by maximusdrex on 12/20/24, 10:26 PM

    What a disaster for ARM. Qualcomm building out new chips targeting the pc market should have been a victory lap for ARM, not the source of a legal battle with their largest customer. Now potential customers might be a little more wary of ARMs licensing practices compared to the free RISC-V ISA.

  • by williamDafoe on 12/21/24, 12:19 AM

    As I said on another forum yesterday, Qualcomm almost always wins its legal battles - when they lose its not because they are wrong but usually only because their lawyers screwed up (Broadcom lawsuit of ~2012). It's kind of a Boy Scout Company in a legal sense and they are very careful. They retrained some of their best engineers as lawyers to help them succeed in court battles ...

  • by hu3 on 12/20/24, 9:39 PM

  • by jasoneckert on 12/20/24, 9:42 PM

    Does the fact that the "jurors weren’t able to agree on whether Nuvia breached the license" mean that the legal fight isn't over?

    Or is that question irrelevant in light of the other findings, and the legal fight is actually over, with Qualcomm as the clear winner?

  • by williamDafoe on 12/21/24, 12:27 AM

    This lawsuit will cast a cloud of darkness on any startup company that wants to build a new arm chip design! What a terribly stupid thing for ARM to do - they have basically pointed a gun at their own head and pulled the trigger!

  • by tiahura on 12/20/24, 10:06 PM

    My understanding was that the central issue was whether the Nuvia “modify” license “transferred” to Qualcomm. If so, wouldn’t that be a legal issue to be resolved by MSJ? Why was this tried to a jury?

  • by dismalaf on 12/20/24, 11:25 PM

    Nuvia never even had a finished product. Not sure what ARM thinks their losses are considering Qualcomm already had an architectural license...

    ARM is (edit) figuratively blowing up their ecosystem for no reason; now everyone will be racing to develop RISC-V just to cut out ARM...

  • by 2809 on 12/21/24, 12:01 AM

    This went exactly as expected. ARM had no leg to stand on going in.

  • by buckle8017 on 12/21/24, 7:26 AM

    Well yes Qualcomm is the CIA of course they won.

  • by mewse-hn on 12/20/24, 10:09 PM

    Haven't read deeply into this particular dispute but Arm suing their own customers doesn't seem good for business. Especially since they lost.