Yesterday, the Qualcomm vs Arm legal battle got under way  in a courtroom in Wilmington, Delaware. The case is expected to take a week.

The nub of the matter is whether Qualcomm’s architecture license with Arm covered designs done by Nuvia – also an Arm licensee – before it was acquired by Qualcomm.

Nuvia’s licence fees were shown in court to be charged at a rate many times more than Qualcomm’s and Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia would result in an estimated revenue loss to Arm of about $50 million.

“We are here asking you to assist us with enforcing our rights,” Arm’s lawyer, Daralyn Durie, told theQualcomm v Arm court battle gets under way jury, presenting emails which she said showed Qualcomm knew it was using  Nuvia’s designs without permission.

“It’s very sad actually,” said Qualcomm’s lawyer Karen Dunn,  “they are here because they want to own the future and they don’t want Qualcomm to compete with them.”

Part of Qualcomm’s case  is that Arm was planning to make chips in competition with Qualcomm. Qualcomm showed the court a plan that Arm CEO Rene Haas had put to Arm’s board about Arm building its own chips which would put it in competition with its customers.

Giving evidence, Haas said that Arm did not build chips but he had to always look to the future.

The CEO of  Qualcomm Cristiano Amon is expected to give evidence and also Nuvia’s founder, Gerard Williams, currently a vp at Qualcomm.

If Arm wins then Qualcomm would have to either negotiate new licence terms – presumably at an increased rate, or stop making Arm-based products which provide a significant portion of its revenues and for which it is estimated to pay Arm fees worth around $300 million a year,