Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Avanci patent pool signs up Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin: 4G SEP licenses without prior litigation

Just an ultrashort post while I'm attending the IAM Auto IP Conference: Avanci Senior VP Laurie Fitzgerald mentioned new standard-essential patent license agreements in her panel presentation with Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin. She said those agreements had been concluded last week. I haven't been able to find any media coverage of those deals yet, so I thought I should share the information in time for today's email notifications, which most of my subscribers will receive in a couple of hours.

According to the Avanci executive, the pool has now licensed 24 million connected vehicles. The number was previously at 18 million in my recollection. Given that 70 million cars are sold every year, that means there still are a lot of unlicensed car makers out there.

No SEP enforcement actions against Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin by Avanci licensors were known. Theoretically, cases can take a while to surface in certain jurisdictions, but for now there's an overwhelming probability of those license deals having been struck without a need for litigation.

I will comment more on this conference tomorrow. There have been some interesting discussions.

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