By that definition even Qualcomm (top 5 semiconductor company) is an NPE as TSMC fabricates their chips. ARM licenses both RTL (code) and GDSII files (the files

By that definition even Qualcomm (top 5 semiconductor company) is an NPE as TSMC fabricates their chips. ARM licenses both RTL (code) and GDSII files (the files that a foundry such as TSMC uses to freate masks for fabrication) just as you would license software. They can hardly be called a NPE.