Qualcomm's case goes beyond "we have a valid license agreement" as to the destruction of Nuvia's design. They're arguing that they do have a valid license agreement, but also that even if they didn't they would still be the lawful owners of the IP and would not be required to destroy it. They might not be able to use it, but they could hold onto it, because nothing in Nuvia's contract with ARM requires it be destroyed by Nuvia.
> 5. Even putting aside Qualcomm’s broad license rights, ARM’s reading of the termination obligations in the NUVIA Architecture License Agreement (“ALA”) is wrong. To the extent any destruction obligation exists, it explicitly applies only to ARM Confidential Information.1 But ARM again omits important facts: (1) under the NUVIA ALA, information in the public domain is not subject to confidentiality obligations, and (2) ARM publishes its instruction set without confidentiality restrictions. Anyone is free to go to the ARM website and download the 10,000+ page ARM Architecture Reference Manual.2 In this case, Qualcomm’s CPU cores are designed to be compatible with the publicly-available ARM Architecture version <redacted>.
> 36. Moreover, even though ARM demanded destruction of Confidential Information obtained under NUVIA’s ALA, NUVIA had implemented ARM Architecture <redacted>, which had been publicly available on ARM’s website for anyone to download since at least around January 2021—over a year before the destruction request. <Redacted sentence>. Therefore, ARM Architecture was not Confidential Information, not subject to any restrictions, and not subject to any destruction obligation. For the same reasons, the NUVIA core design did not contain ARM Confidential Information.
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> It's also quite a visible move just to delay the proceedings.
I really don't agree. It looks like a bog standard discovery dispute.
> 5. Even putting aside Qualcomm’s broad license rights, ARM’s reading of the termination obligations in the NUVIA Architecture License Agreement (“ALA”) is wrong. To the extent any destruction obligation exists, it explicitly applies only to ARM Confidential Information.1 But ARM again omits important facts: (1) under the NUVIA ALA, information in the public domain is not subject to confidentiality obligations, and (2) ARM publishes its instruction set without confidentiality restrictions. Anyone is free to go to the ARM website and download the 10,000+ page ARM Architecture Reference Manual.2 In this case, Qualcomm’s CPU cores are designed to be compatible with the publicly-available ARM Architecture version <redacted>.
> 36. Moreover, even though ARM demanded destruction of Confidential Information obtained under NUVIA’s ALA, NUVIA had implemented ARM Architecture <redacted>, which had been publicly available on ARM’s website for anyone to download since at least around January 2021—over a year before the destruction request. <Redacted sentence>. Therefore, ARM Architecture was not Confidential Information, not subject to any restrictions, and not subject to any destruction obligation. For the same reasons, the NUVIA core design did not contain ARM Confidential Information.
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> It's also quite a visible move just to delay the proceedings.
I really don't agree. It looks like a bog standard discovery dispute.
(cites are paragraph numbers in https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.798...)