Comment by phire
1 year ago
My memory is that before the lawsuit, Qualcomm were using both arguments, "we have the right to transfer the licence, and even if we didn't, we have our own license".
The first argument was always the weaker argument, the license explicitly banned licence transfers between companies without explicit prior permission. Qualcomm were arguing that the fact they already had a licence counted as prior permission.
But ARM bypassed that argument by just terminating the Nuvia licence, and by the time of the lawsuit qualcomm was down to the second argument. Which was good, it was the much stronger argument.
But is it even a second company (and thus a license transfer) if Qualcomm bought Nuvia?
I was wondering about that too. If I understand correctly, the Arm license includes a clause stipulating that it is invalidated if the company is acquired unless Arm grants permission.
It makes sense. You wouldn't want to license something to a startup only for your competitor to buy them out from under you to get an advantage / bypassing talking to you directly.
It could be. Rumor is Intel (or AMD in the same situation) would lose the cross licensed parts of their x86 license if they were acquired.
Wonderful, another albatross over the head of the x64 architecture.