Chip technology firm Arm, which is owned by Softbank Group, said on Wednesday it has sued Qualcomm and Qualcomm’s recently acquired chip design firm Nuvia Inc for breach of license agreements and trademark infringement.
Arm is seeking an injunction that would require Qualcomm to destroy the designs developed under Nuvia’s license agreements with Arm, which Arm said could not be transferred to Qualcomm without Arm approval. Qualcomm acquired Nuvia for $1.4 billion last year.
The lawsuit represents a major break between Qualcomm and Arm, one of its most important technology partners that Qualcomm relied on for years after Qualcomm stopped work on designing its own custom computing cores.
But the two companies have been at odds for years, with some inside Qualcomm complaining privately that Arm’s slackening pace of innovation is causing Qualcomm’s chips to fall behind Apple’s processors in performance.
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