Qualcomm Says US Court Rejects Arm’s Final Claim in Lawsuit
By Peter Blumberg
September 30, 2025 at 9:40 PM EDT
Updated on September 30, 2025 at 11:29 PM EDT
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
- A Delaware court dismissed Arm Holdings Plc's last remaining legal claim against Qualcomm Inc.
- The court ruled that Qualcomm and its subsidiary Nuvia didn't breach license agreements with Arm.
- Arm said it will immediately file an appeal seeking to overturn the judgment, and remains confident in its position in its ongoing dispute with Qualcomm.
Qualcomm Inc. said a Delaware court dismissed Arm Holdings Plc’s last remaining legal claim against the chipmaker, handing the US company a victory in their long-running dispute.
The District Court ruled that Qualcomm and its subsidiary Nuvia didn’t breach license agreements with Arm, the US chipmaker said in an emailed statement late Tuesday.
The two longtime business partners have been locked in a legal dispute as they jockey for advantage in the computing semiconductor market. In December, Qualcomm prevailed at trial against UK-based Arm’s claim that it breached a license for chip technology that it acquired when it bought Nuvia in 2021.
“With the Court’s decision today, Qualcomm and its subsidiary Nuvia have achieved a full victory,” Ann Chaplin, Qualcomm’s general counsel, said in the statement. “This decision follows Qualcomm’s December 2024 jury trial win and is a full and final judgment in Qualcomm’s favor.”
Both companies are trying to position themselves to benefit from a boom in computing demand — for everything from desktops to AI systems — as the market for smartphone chips, which had fueled much of their growth in recent years, has become more sluggish.
“Arm remains confident in its position in its ongoing dispute with Qualcomm and will immediately file an appeal seeking to overturn the judgment,” the British company said in a statement.
Arm, which is majority-owned by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., sells chip designs and licenses a so-called instruction set — code used by software to communicate with processors. Qualcomm is the biggest chip provider to mobile phone makers such as Samsung Electronics Co. The dispute is important because many of the world’s largest tech companies license Arm’s architecture and incorporate it into products from computers to cars.
“This decisive legal victory is monumental for Qualcomm,” said Neil Shah, a vice president at research firm Counterpoint. Qualcomm can now deploy Nuvia’s tech “across a much broader spectrum of applications from PCs, smartphones, and automotive to high-performance computing domains like AI servers and even humanoid robotics.”
— With assistance from Ian King and Yoolim Lee
(Updates with statement from Arm in sixth paragraph.)
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