The Arm-Qualcomm verdict came down Tuesday in Wilmington, and the jury awarded $2. A Delaware jury found that Arm breached its architecture license agreement with Qualcomm and intentionally interfered with Qualcomm’s dealings with Meta, then awarded $1 on each of those two claims. My first reaction was that a decimal point had gone missing somewhere.

The breach is narrow. According to Reuters, the jury found that Arm failed to provide software patches and tools for its designs, and sided with Arm on the other breach allegations. Electronics Weekly and Technology.org both count the result as two Qualcomm wins out of six claims, including Qualcomm’s pricing complaint, which lost. The Meta finding is the more colorful one: Qualcomm says it was close to a deal with Meta in 2024 when Arm leaked a license-termination warning letter to Bloomberg, a delay Qualcomm puts at about $170 million. Arm’s lawyer told the jury Qualcomm “was not harmed in the least,” and on the dollar figure the jury agreed with him.

Both companies are calling this a win, and both are right about what the form says. Qualcomm points at breach and intentional disruption. Arm points at two dollars as proof it acted in good faith. Neither statement mentions where the money actually sits, because it was never in the damages line.

Judge Maryellen Noreika still has to rule on whether the breach lets Qualcomm stop paying Arm royalties for five years, a clause Reuters calls potentially worth billions and Electronics Weekly puts above $2 billion. Arm argues the clause is unenforceable. She also has to decide whether Arm negotiated in good faith over the next version of its architecture, and Electronics Weekly expects that ruling within weeks.

Reuters says the losing side on those decisions would likely appeal, so a third round is already on the calendar in everyone’s head.

In July I wrote that the first fight over Nuvia was won and the appeal still live, and that the second trial was the one that would say whether Arm can sell its own chips and still set its licensees’ terms. This verdict is a partial, tiny answer: the one thing the jury actually pinned on Arm is withholding the tools its customers build with. I’d rather not oversell that. A $2 award from a jury that had the Meta letter in front of it is not a mandate.

The royalty clause is where I’d watch, because it changes the arithmetic I walked through in the post on what leaving Arm would cost Qualcomm. I argued that walking away would barely reduce the bill. A five-year royalty holiday would reduce it a lot, and it would do so without Qualcomm moving a single core to another instruction set. Qualcomm is usually the one collecting, as when it renewed Apple’s patent license or struck a Huawei deal that disclosed one number, so I’m curious how it behaves when the clause is the thing it’s asking for.

Sources