Arm vs. Qualcomm jury verdict context: alleged withholding of design tools and a Bloomberg-linked termination threat

The jury in Qualcomm’s lawsuit against Arm left court on Friday without a verdict, after about four hours of deliberation. The case turns on whether Arm broke licensing deals and whether it tried to interfere with Qualcomm’s business with Meta Platforms.

That is only part of the fight. Qualcomm says Arm withheld software patches and design tools, and also violated an agreement meant to keep Qualcomm paying within 10% of Arm’s lowest price for processor designs. Arm says Qualcomm is trying to gain leverage in a wider licensing battle, not recover real harm.

The clash has been building for years. This was the second trial between the companies in two years, following Arm’s shift under SoftBank Group from licensing chip architecture to also selling its own chips. Qualcomm’s license for Arm’s computing architecture runs until 2033, but the company is already fighting over what comes next.

Qualcomm also wants the jury to say Arm tried to derail talks with Meta by leaking, to Bloomberg, a 2024 Arm letter saying Qualcomm was allegedly in breach of a key license agreement. Arm’s lawyers pushed the opposite theme in court: no harm, no case. The jury is due back Tuesday.

There is also a separate bench trial on whether Arm is negotiating in good faith over new terms, and that decision could come later. The same judge, Maryellen Noreika, oversaw this case and the 2024 trial, which ended with Arm failing to persuade a jury that Qualcomm had breached its own agreement.