The automotive patent wars are heating up following a recent decision of the Mannheim Regional Court in Germany, which held that Daimler had infringed on a Nokia patent for connected car technology. The decision relates specifically to Nokia’s European patent EP2981103.
This case represents one of a number of 3G/4G/5G patents that are part of the Avanci patent pool with which other car makers, including BMW and Volkswagen, have already concluded licences to some degree or another. It has been reported that Daimler’s co-litigants in the proceedings were Continental, Huawei, Robert Bosch, difference between computer science and computer engineering, Valeo/Peiker and Bury, and this case is part of a wider litigation campaign by other members of the Avanci patent pool including Conversant and Sharp.
One of the key issues that Daimler disputes is whether, as a car maker, it is required to obtain a licence from Nokia to use the patented technology itself, or whether it should be the Tier 1 suppliers (in this case Continental) of the connectivity modules that should obtain the licence. This could have something to do with the royalties payable—because patent royalties are typically calculated as a percentage of sales price of the product sold, and so the percentage royalty on a complete car may be somewhere higher in absolute terms than the same percentage of a component part.
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