Qualcomm formally offered to pay Arm up to 5% above the absolute best v10 rate granted to any other licensee — and Arm rejected it, according to court evidence presented on Day 3 of the Qualcomm vs. Arm licensing trial.

The revelation came as testimony shifted the case from a narrow contract dispute into what witnesses framed as a broader fight for ecosystem dominance. The trial concludes tomorrow.

What does the offer tell us about the standoff?

Court evidence showed Qualcomm did not simply demand to lock in frozen 2013 mobile pricing for future v10 products. Instead, the company proposed a tiered royalty system with different premium rates per market segment — separate brackets for mobile, data centres, wearables, automotive, and compute.

Arm ultimately rejected the structure. The disclosure undercuts any suggestion that Qualcomm sought to pay 2013-era rates for next-generation architecture; the company was willing to pay a premium over Arm's best customer, just not on Arm's unified terms.

Did Arm negotiate v10 in good faith?

Qualcomm's lawyers pressed the question of when the company first sought access to v10 technology, presenting documents showing Qualcomm explicitly asked Arm about its v10 roadmap and framework as early as 2020.

Lynn Couillard, who served as Arm's dedicated account manager for Qualcomm during that period, testified that she proactively pursued Qualcomm's v10 requests internally. She admitted to the court, however, that she never received a response from her own company to pass back to Qualcomm.

Qualcomm's lawyers also asked how Arm successfully secured v10 agreements with Microsoft and Google while allegedly stonewalling its largest licensee. Qualcomm contends Arm acted in bad faith to squeeze leverage out of the relationship.

What is the royalty dispute actually about?

Arm's legal team countered by highlighting Qualcomm's heavy investment and planning around RISC-V, the open-source alternative instruction set architecture. Arm argued Qualcomm is actively trying to bypass its proprietary ecosystem while refusing to pay modern royalty rates on chips with 288 cores.

Qualcomm, for its part, relies on its 2013 Architecture Licence Agreement (ALA), which capped royalties at $1.88 per chip for any chip with five or more cores. Under that cap, a 288-core data-centre processor would carry the same $1.88 royalty as a mid-range mobile SoC — the economics at the heart of the clash.

What did Rene Haas say about "unwinding the ALA"?

Qualcomm highlighted internal Arm communications that explicitly mentioned an objective to "unwind the ALA," arguing this proved Arm was trying to kill the existing contract.

Arm CEO Rene Haas took the stand to defend the company's negotiating tactics and clarify internal communications Qualcomm had flagged as hostile.

Haas testified that "unwinding the ALA" did not mean abandoning or cancelling architecture licences entirely. He explained it meant revising outdated ALA royalty rates.

Haas said Arm's ultimate goal was to bring the economics of its ALAs and its Technology Licence Agreements (TLAs) closer together. As Arm's architecture expands beyond mobile into higher-value sectors — data centres, PCs, and automotive systems — Haas argued Arm must legally capture the modern value it creates rather than remain bound to decades-old pricing.

How did compliance tools enter the case?

As the trial advanced into technical compliance, Qualcomm's witnesses detailed how Arm's alleged withholding of Architecture Compliance Kits and chip-testing tools disrupted product validation.

The testimony linked what had appeared to be separate contract complaints into a single narrative: access to v10, compliance kits, test tooling, and royalty terms all serve as leverage points in the fight over who controls the economics of Arm-based silicon in compute-heavy markets.

The case wraps up tomorrow, with the court's reading of the 2013 ALA's $1.88 cap — and whether "unwinding" it constitutes renegotiation or termination — likely to shape how Arm prices architecture licences across data centres, PCs, and automotive for years to come.