Remember the lawsuit between Nokia and Daimler that I told you last month? (Portal: Daimler broke into Nokia, unwilling to pay huge patent fees, but was sentenced to lose)
Nokia, as a company with mobile communication patents, requires car companies to pay patent fees according to each car. Volkswagen, BMW and Volvo all agreed, but Daimler disagreed, so the two sides started a lawsuit.
Last month, the court in Mannheim, Germany, ruled against Daimler. Nokia has the right to prevent Daimler from selling cars in Germany if it is willing to pay a deposit of 7 billion euros. Fortunately, 7 billion euros is not a small sum, so Daimler is temporarily safe and has filed a counterclaim.
However, this month, Nokia's ally Sharp gave Daimler a heavy blow.
10 In September, the court in Munich, Germany ruled that Sharp won the case of suing Daimler for patent infringement, and at the same time, Sharp also obtained an injunction prohibiting Daimler from selling cars in Germany, and this time the deposit was only 5.5 million euros, which means that once Sharp wants to be serious, Daimler may not be able to sell cars.
The headache is not over yet.
Sharp became an ally of Nokia because they joined a company called Avanci with Qualcomm and other technology companies? LLC's patent licensing platform is also promoted by the platform, which collects patent fees from car companies according to each car.
Originally, the traditional practice of the automobile industry was that automobile companies asked parts suppliers to come forward to deal with licensing issues with patent companies. Patent fees include packaging parts and sold to auto companies, such as automotive telematics control parts provided by Continental Group for Daimler, with a unit price of $65,438+000.
But Avanci? LLC platform changed the rules of the game, and directly charged patent fees to car companies. Patents related to connected cars are divided into three levels-emergency call, 3G and 4G, and the cost is $3-$65,438+$05 per car respectively.
You may think that the patent license fee of $ 3- 15 per vehicle is not too much, but Daimler, Continental and other parts suppliers think the cost is too high. Continental said that the 4G patent fee of $ 15 per vehicle was higher than the profit of telematics control components with a price of $ 100.
The most important thing is to bypass the parts suppliers, and the patented party directly talks with the car companies, and each car involves more than one patent, which makes Daimler very unhappy.
Daimler was not fighting alone. Navigation companies TomTom, Bosch and Continental are all helping Daimler appeal. Continental also launched a campaign against Avanci in the United States. Anti-monopoly litigation of LLC members.
Unfortunately, on the second day after Sharp won the case, the federal court in Texas dismissed Continental's lawsuit, arguing that the patent licensing platform bypassed parts suppliers and negotiated the licensing agreement directly with car companies, which did not violate the anti-monopoly law, but only realized the maximization of patent value.
Why did Daimler work so hard and risk being banned from selling cars? Because cars will be more and more interconnected in the future, a smart car is full of electronic products, and the patent of wireless technology is very critical. Whether you want to make a Bluetooth phone call, listen to music or start an emergency rescue service in your car, you should use these wireless technologies.
Where's Fanqi? The LLC platform is pricing the 5G patent, which will not only be a problem of $65,438+05 for a car, but Daimler does not want to see the cost continue to rise.
But for Avanci? For the members of LLC, 5G is a good opportunity for them to earn more profits, and the automobile industry is just a channel to make profits. In this era of Internet of Everything, all electronic appliances need to be connected to the Internet, including your refrigerator, the combine harvester on the farm and the medical equipment in the hospital.
In front of Nokia and Sharp, there is a huge gold mine. They cannot give up or let go of any enterprise. The lawsuit against Daimler is more like a demonstration. It is not the purpose to prohibit the other party from selling cars. The purpose is to tell other companies through one victory after another, hand over the money and stop tangled.
Jorge, a law professor specializing in patent law at the University of Utah? Contreras said, "In the final analysis, everything is related to money, and there are no other problems."
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.