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That's all routine though. This kind of license negotiation happens all the time, in every industry. Companies need to work together to sell their products.

by ajross 2y ago

That's all routine though. This kind of license negotiation happens all the time, in every industry. Companies need to work together to sell their products. And almost always it ends up just being rolled into whatever the next contract they write is. Very occasionally, it ends up in court and one side settles once it's clear which direction the wind is blowing. But getting to the point where a supplier of critical infrastructure pulls a figurative knife on one of their biggest customers for no particularly obvious reason is just insane. ARM Ltd. absolutely loses here (Qualcomm does too, obviously), in pretty much any analysis. Their other licensees are watching carefully and thinking hard about future product directions.

michaelt 2y ago
See, this is one of the downsides of running an IP based business. If you're selling physical chips and customer decides not to pay for their last shipment, you stop sending them chips. No need to get the courts involved; the customer can pay, negotiate, or do without. But when you're selling IP and a customer decides not to pay? You can't stop them making chips using your IP, except by going through the courts. And when you do, people think you're "pulling a figurative knife on one of your biggest customers for no reason"
- ajross 2y ago
  That's true enough, but you can refuse to license them for their next product, which is (or should be) incentive enough. Selling silicon IP blocks is a very mature industry, ARM is one of many such companies, and no one else is out there throwing doomsday bombs like this. Really, this is extremely weird.
  - klelatti 2y ago
    > but you can refuse to license them for their next product That might not be legally possible - or deemed to be anticompetitive. Cancelling an existing license if a firm has breached it would probably be less problematic.

by ajross 2y ago

michaelt 2y ago

See, this is one of the downsides of running an IP based business. If you're selling physical chips and customer decides not to pay for their last shipment, you stop sending them chips. No need to get the courts involved; the customer can pay, negotiate, or do without. But when you're selling IP and a customer decides not to pay? You can't stop them making chips using your IP, except by going through the courts. And when you do, people think you're "pulling a figurative knife on one of your biggest customers for no reason"

ajross 2y ago
That's true enough, but you can refuse to license them for their next product, which is (or should be) incentive enough. Selling silicon IP blocks is a very mature industry, ARM is one of many such companies, and no one else is out there throwing doomsday bombs like this. Really, this is extremely weird.
- klelatti 2y ago
  > but you can refuse to license them for their next product That might not be legally possible - or deemed to be anticompetitive. Cancelling an existing license if a firm has breached it would probably be less problematic.