Qualcomm Wins Decisive Post-Trial Victory in High-Profile Licensing Dispute Against Arm

Paul, Weiss, alongside co-counsel, won a resounding victory for semiconductor giant Qualcomm Inc. in a closely watched breach of contract suit brought by Arm Ltd. over Arm’s license agreement with Qualcomm subsidiary Nuvia. The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware granted judgment as a matter of law to Qualcomm and Nuvia, rejecting Arm’s last remaining claim against Nuvia and its efforts to overturn a December 2024 jury verdict in Qualcomm’s favor.

Arm, a UK-based company that has long licensed computer architecture that enables computer software and hardware to communicate, sued Qualcomm in 2022, alleging that, after Qualcomm bought Nuvia in 2021, it breached Nuvia’s architecture license agreement with Arm by continuing to use and refusing to destroy Arm-compliant CPUs that Qualcomm had developed. Following a breakneck December 2024 trial, a Delaware jury rejected Arm’s claims, confirming that Qualcomm had not breached the Nuvia agreement and that Qualcomm’s products were licensed under Qualcomm’s longstanding architecture license agreement with Arm. The verdict allowed Qualcomm to continue to develop its innovative custom CPU cores, including using designs from the Nuvia acquisition. However, the jury hung on the question of whether Nuvia breached its own architecture license agreement with Arm.

Post-trial, the parties filed cross motions for judgment as a matter of law, and Arm also filed a motion for a new trial. In her September 30 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika found that Arm had failed as a matter of law to prove it had been harmed by Nuvia’s alleged breach, upholding the jury verdicts for Qualcomm and rejecting both Arm’s attempts to overturn them and its request for a new trial.

Contrary to Arm’s contentions that its entire “ecosystem” was purportedly harmed by Qualcomm’s development and sale of custom CPUs, the court found “there was trial evidence to undermine that ARM suffered any adverse consequences at all, such as when ARM’s CEO testified that ARM recorded historic licensing and royalty revenues after terminating the Nuvia ALA in 2022.” The court also held that internal Arm evidence that Qualcomm presented at trial foiled Arm’s attempts to overturn the jury’s verdicts. The decision confirms Qualcomm was fully licensed under its existing agreement with Arm and that neither Qualcomm nor Nuvia breached Nuvia’s architectural licensing agreement.

The court’s ruling has broad ramifications for the global semiconductor market and the protection and generation of innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence. In ruling against Arm, the court confirmed that Arm’s efforts to prevent the innovation of one of its largest licensees failed.

The Paul, Weiss team includes litigation partners Catherine Nyarady, William Marks and Michael Holston and counsel Conrad Scott.