San Francisco, Sep 1 : Softbank’s owned British chip maker Arm has filed a lawsuit against chip maker Qualcomm together with the startup Nuvia (acquired by Qualcomm for $1.4 billion) over trademarks for chip designs violations.In the case filed in the US Federal District Court in Delaware, Arm said that both Qualcomm and Nuvia violated the licenses by utilizing the Arm processor design and designs.
“To accelerate the development of processors, Qualcomm spent over $1 billion to purchase Nuvia which was a start-up run by senior engineers from Apple and Google which licensed Arm technologies to create powerful processor cores that can be used in semiconductor chips.” according to the lawsuit.
In the course of this, Qualcomm allegedly caused Nuvia to violate its Arm licenses, which led Arm to end its licenses in which case it required Qualcomm as well as Nuvia to cease using and destroying any technology based on Arm that was developed pursuant to the licenses.
“Undeterred, Qualcomm and Nuvia continue to work to implement Nuvia’s version of Arm architecture in violation of Arm’s rights as the creator and licensee of the technology” according to the lawsuit.
In addition, Qualcomm’s conduct suggests that it is already and plans to utilize Arm’s trademarks to promote and sell the products in the US even though those products are not licensed according to the statement.
Arm now is calling on Qualcomm as well as Nuvia to cease using and destroying the pertinent Nuvia technology and also stop the unauthorized use of Nuvia’s trademarks with their products.
Arm is also seeking compensation in connection with its application of its trademarks in connection with semiconductor chips that incorporate the pertinent Nuvia technology.
In a statement to the Registrar, Arm said that Qualcomm has violated the conditions of the Arm license agreement by continuing to develop under the expired licenses.
Qualcomm replied to Arm’s suit, declaring “Arm’s lawsuit is an unfortunate departure from its long-standing and successful partnership with Qualcomm”.
“Arm’s complaint is ignoring the fact that Qualcomm has broad, well-established , and well-established license rights for its custom-designed CPUs We are confident that these rights will be confirmed,” the company said.
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