A federal jury in Delaware has found in favour of Qualcomm in the latest round of its four year licensing war with Arm. On October 13 the jury found that Arm breached its Architectural License Agreement and intentionally interfered with the commercialisation of Qualcomm’s custom Oryon processors, and awarded Qualcomm one dollar on each claim, two dollars in total.
The verdict lets Qualcomm keep marketing its custom silicon across smartphones, AI personal computers and automotive platforms without injunction risk. The jury found Arm liable for leaking the 2024 licence termination warning letter and for withholding software patches and chip testing tools, but sided with Arm on five of six breach allegations and on four claims overall, as Arm noted in its own statement: “the jury’s verdict confirms that Arm operated in good faith under its technology license agreement and its award of only $2 confirms the merit of Arm’s arguments.”
Qualcomm called the outcome “a victory for innovation and competition.” The financial stakes sit in the remedy, not the damages. Judge Maryellen Noreika has yet to decide whether a contract clause allowing a licensee to suspend royalty payments for five years after a material breach is enforceable. Qualcomm accounted for about 10 percent of Arm’s total revenue in fiscal 2024, so a five year pause would be material to Arm and to the handset and PC makers, including Samsung, whose supply the verdict stabilises.
The dispute began with Qualcomm’s 2021 acquisition of Nuvia and Arm’s 2022 demand that Nuvia derived designs be destroyed. A December 2024 jury found Qualcomm’s technology properly licensed, and that judgment was affirmed in September 2025, with Arm’s appeal still pending.