"Chips themselves can be sold, yes"

How would even that be possible? Surely ARM's laywers are not interested in ripoff products being sold in the West.

Arm does not manufacture chips. They license IP for per chip or blanket fees. The model of many of these licenses is irrevocable. I've seen a couple different Arm licensing contracts and they're all very different so hard to make blanket statements. The Chinese entity has the right to license to all Chinese semiconductor firms who have the right to sell their chips.

I'm aware of how ARM operates. I just find it incredible that ARM would allow some entity to license its designs contrary to ARM's own intentions, or generally do anything that entity wanted to do with them, and ARM would just consent to it in places where law is enforced. I mean, shredding counterfeit imported goods has been a traditional pastime in the west.

These are not counterfeit goods though. Where has the law been broken in a way that gives Arm the power to act? Probably IP licensed under Chinese law and Arm China will probably get its way in Chinese courts.

As dylan522p is saying, it depends very heavily on the actual agreement. Which unfortunately isn't public and has historically been very different in each case so we can't even look at similar agreements for guidance.

That being said, it wouldn't be totally out there for a clause in the agreement that doesn't allow export of chips with this IP, and that would probably be enforced as ITO judgements allowing seizing chips and end devices at ingress points. The ITO would essentially treat them as counterfeit if all of those assumptions hold true, similar to how how remanufactured and ghost shift iPhone replacement parts famously get labeled as counterfeit legally.

dylan522p says above:

> Chips themselves can be sold, yes. The IP cannot be licensed to non Chinese based semi firms.

I'd be astonished if licenses to Chinese SoC designers prevented products with those SoC's being sold outside China. So RockChip, Spreadtrum etc would be cut off from the rest of the world? Or forced to license separately with Arm UK for chips for products that are to be exported? Seems very unlikely.

Plus I'd expect we'd have seen action taken already if they really had broken the terms of the licensing.

Agreed that we're all speculating to some extent though!

They are allowed to sell chips outside of china with Arm IP licensed from Arm China

> Or forced to license separately with Arm UK for chips for products that are to be exported? Seems very unlikely.

Or do nothing and look at their chips being turned back to sand as soon as they land in a western country.

By who and on what grounds? You need to point out a law they have actually broken.

Patent infringement, quite simply!

Custom's responsibility is to destroy counterfeit goods.

But the point is that Arm China have a license! You may not like it but AC / Allen Wu seem to be operating within Chinese law.

They can infringe patents and distribute counterfeits all they want on the mainland. As soon as it gets to the west, it will go in the shredder.