Arm Holdings Plc is canceling a license that allowed longtime partner Qualcomm Inc. to use Arm intellectual property to design chips, escalating a legal dispute over vital smartphone technology.Arm, based in the UK,

Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm's ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips.

Arm has taken its feud with Qualcomm to the next level, two years after filing a lawsuit against its former close partner. According to Bloomberg, the British semiconductor company has canceled the architecture license allowing Qualcomm to use its intellectual property and standards for chip design.