San Francisco, Sep 1 Softbank-owned British chip designer Arm has sued chip giant Qualcomm along with startup Nuvia (acquired by Qualcomm for $1.4 billion) over chip design trademark violations.
In the lawsuit filed in a US federal district court in Delaware, Arm said that both Qualcomm and Nuvia violated the licenses by using Arm's processor designs and architecture.
"To accelerate its processor development efforts, Qualcomm spent over $1 billion to acquire Nuvia, a start-up led by senior engineers previously from Apple and Google that licensed Arm technologies to develop high-performance processor cores for semiconductor chips," read the lawsuit.
In the process, Qualcomm allegedly caused Nuvia to breach its Arm licenses, leading Arm to terminate those licenses, in turn requiring Qualcomm and Nuvia to stop using and destroy any Arm-based technology developed under the licenses.
"Undeterred, Qualcomm and Nuvia have continued working on Nuvia's implementation of Arm architecture in violation of Arm's rights as the creator and licensor of its technology", the lawsuit said.
Further, Qualcomm's conduct indicates that it has already and further intends to use Arm's trademarks to advertise and sell the resulting products in the US, even though those products are unlicensed, it added.
Arm now wants Qualcomm and Nuvia to stop using and destroy the relevant Nuvia technology, and stop the improper use of its trademarks with their related products.
Arm is also seeking damages for the use of its trademarks in connection with semiconductor chips incorporating the relevant Nuvia technology.
In a statement to The Registrar, Arm said that Qualcomm has breached the terms of the Arm license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses.
Qualcomm responded to Arm's lawsuit, saying "Arm's lawsuit marks an unfortunate departure from its longstanding, successful relationship with Qualcomm".
"Arm's complaint ignores the fact that Qualcomm has broad, well-established license rights covering its custom-designed CPUs, and we are confident those rights will be affirmed," the company said.
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