Stephen Nellis, Diane Bartz

(Reuters) – Monday’s U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) argued that the new markets for chip in self-driving vehicles and a new type of networking chips will be affected by Nvidia Corp’s $80billion purchase of Arm Ltd.

The regulator stated last week it was going to sue Nvidia to stop the acquisition of Arm (UK) from Softbank (OTC). Arm licences its computing technology to semiconductor firms that use it to create chips for devices, such as mobile phones.

On Monday, the FTC issued a redacted copy of its complaint. The FTC stated that it believed Arm’s acquisition by Nvidia would harm competition as hundreds of chip firms that depend on Arm might be reluctant to continue working with British companies in fear of Nvidia accessing their product plans.

Nvidia announced the acquisition to make Arm a viable alternative to the “x86” architecture. Intel Corp (NASDAQ:), which dominates data centers and PCs. Arm can now be found in central processors of smart phones, but it is not used for data center servers.

Nvidia argues that Intel’s x86 architecture is 97.4% in the data center server market. Accordingly, it plans to invest in Arm for a better alternative.

The FTC filed a complaint Monday focusing instead on markets in which Arm has a dominant position and where x86 cannot be used. Nvidia (NASDAQ:) Inc and its rivals, Intel to Tesla (NASDAQ.) Inc, rely primarily in Arm for new fields like self driving car chips and “data processor unit” chips. These are networking chips that offer security and connectivity to data centers.

“Nvidia has the incentive to harm Arm reliant

Competitors in (self-driving chips) rather than working together with them to succeed as Arm does today. Nvidia is closely competing against these competitors for large business.

Opportunities,” FTC said.

In antitrust cases, market definition is often a major factor.

Nvidia did not respond beyond the statement it made last week, in which it stated that it will “work hard to show that this transaction is beneficial for industry and promotes competition.”

Arm executives have told Reuters that Nvidia and Arm plan to create “firewalls” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-arm/arm-exec-says-firewalls-will-protect-customer-info-after-nvidia-deal-idUSKBN26S3A1 to protect any information shared with Arm from being inappropriately used by Nvidia.

Herbert Hovenkamp is an antitrust professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He said that any firewalls Arm and Nvidia have created will probably fail.

He said, “The agencies hate firewalls rightly.”