In November 2019, Patently Apple posted a report titled “The Mastermind behind Apple’s A-Series Processors is now CEO of a startup called NUVIA aiming to take on Intel and AMD.” Gerard Williams III was Apple’s Senior Director in Platform Architecture responsible for SOC and CPU development. In December 2019 we followed up with a report about Apple suing Williams III for breach of contract.
Today, Arm filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm Inc. and two of its subsidiaries (“Qualcomm”) and Nuvia, Inc. (“Nuvia”) in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware for breach of certain license agreements with Arm and trademark infringement. Arm is seeking specific performance of the contractual obligation to destroy certain Nuvia designs, an injunction against trademark infringement as well as fair compensation for the trademark infringement.
Arm issued the following statement regarding the lawsuit:
“Arm is filing this claim to protect Arm, our partners, and the unparalleled ecosystem we have built together. Arm and its partners have invested billions of dollars to create industry-leading intellectual property. Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm’s consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm’s license agreements, Nuvia’s licenses terminated in March 2022. Before and after that date, Arm made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution. In contrast, Qualcomm has breached the terms of the Arm license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses. Arm was left with no choice other than to bring this claim against Qualcomm and Nuvia to protect our IP, our business, and to ensure customers are able to access valid Arm-based products.”
The company’s press release published earlier today further noted that “Arm takes pride in our role as innovator of the world’s most critical semiconductor IP and the billions of devices that run on Arm. These technological achievements have required years of research and significant costs and should be recognized and respected. As an intellectual property company, it is incumbent upon us to protect our rights and the rights of our ecosystem. We will work vigorously to protect what is rightfully ours and we are confident that the courts will agree with us.”
