Does Volkswagen's final acceptance of Avanci's 4G licensing program mean that Huawei is also fast-entering the pool?

Author: Yellow Warbler

On March 8, automotive patent pool Avanci announced that Volkswagen has expanded its existing relationship with Avanci's one-stop licensing to cover essential patents for 4G standards.

This is another major breakthrough in the patent pool following the announcement of LG Korea joining Avanci as a licensor on the 10th of last month.

The reason why Volkswagen has attracted much attention is several reasons:

The first is to see if Volkswagen can successfully oppose Avanci. Volkswagen joined Avanci's 3G program in 2019, but has not been updated to 4G, but according to Avanci members mentioned in the indictment, Volkswagen has actually been using 4G functions. However, the reason why Volkswagen did not upgrade to 4G has not been disclosed by the two sides, so the outside world is not clear about the differences between the two sides. So last December, Avanci member Acer sued Volkswagen in the United States for infringement of 4G patents. FOSSPATENT also reported last month that IP Bridge also sued Volkswagen in Munich for patent EP2294737 for the 4G/LTE standard. Therefore, this person who stands in the Avanci pool against Avanci is worth paying attention to.

The second is that it has been spreading the word to the public in organizing the "Licensee Negotiation Group LNG". This is the focus of Avanci and its members, if enough licensees organize to implement joint bargaining or even change the licensing method (component level - vehicle level), which is obviously very unfavorable to some of the right holders in the Avanci patent pool, so Qualcomm took the way of warning in person at the Auto IP meeting, followed by the complaints of Acer and others in the lawsuit.

The third is that Volkswagen and Huawei "sang a double reed". In July last year, Huawei officially announced that it had reached a 4G license with Volkswagen suppliers, and the timing and content of this license are worth paying attention to. I have questioned this in the article "The "IP" Conjecture Behind the Marriage between Huawei and Volkswagen", the time should be between the period of the public's boycott of Avanci's 4G license, the content of Huawei and Volkswagen suppliers only signed 4G licenses, which means that the two said in one fell swoop that the "component-level" licensed raw rice to make mature rice, the second is Huawei's role as a supplier, in the 4G license rate may be signed very low, so it may be for the public to "forge" a weapon to negotiate with Avanci, of course, this is just a conjecture, As for whether this method will be useful, it is not yet certain.

At present, Volkswagen's "anti-water" work has automatically stopped with the upgrade of 4G licenses, which also means that Volkswagen has reconfirmed the existing vehicle-level licenses and rates. Of course, there is also a possibility of entering the pool with a component-level license with Huawei. In the future, Whether Avanci's patent pool will become a stealth bomb in both support vehicle charging and agreed component charging will be worthy of attention.

However, in this series of "resistance" operations of volkswagen, whether it can be exchanged for a certain additional right to manage in the pool is worth paying attention to.

"Children who cry have milk" is an eternal truth.

Just like when Daimler joined Avanci at the end of last year, German media reports mentioned that Daimler spokesman Silke Mockert said: "When we join Avanci, we can help shape the licensing conditions for 5G in the future."

This actually speaks to the question of whether there will be some "hidden clauses" in the management of the patent pool. Patent pools are supposedly public rules, but there may be more room for change in how they are implemented at some decision levels.

Whether Volkswagen's participation will also "help shape the licensing conditions for 5G in the future" like Daimler will be worth looking forward to, because both Daimler and Volkswagen are the role of licensees, and what impact their voices will bring to the entire automotive industry on 5G licensing conditions is still worth paying attention to.

Huawei, which has always been close to Daimler and Volkswagen, is even more mysterious, at least in terms of patents, and has been supporting these two companies. In exchange for closer cooperation, not only with Daimler on the in-vehicle operating system, but also with plans to package some members of the autonomous driving division to the public.

In a recent interview with IAM, Alan Fan, Director of Huawei's Intellectual Property Department, mentioned that two "do not rule out" are worth paying attention to: we never eliminate litigation from equation; second, we do not wish to give the impression that Huawei will never join Avanci）。

According to common sense, it is speculated that removing the word "negative" may be the real idea of Huawei's future plans.

For the first point huawei talked about, litigation is not excluded, and from the perspective of the context, it should still only be for overseas market licensing promotion. For the second point to add Avanci's dynamic thinking, as the article said, the timing of joining will be considered based on its own needs and location.

However, in the Avanci patent pool, the launch of 5G licensing rates has been postponed from last year to this year, whether it is also waiting for some big rights holders to join, such as LG, Huawei, Samsung and so on. Therefore, it is very likely that this time window before the launch of 5G rates is an opportunity for these big rights holders to join.

LG joined on February 10, and if Huawei joins in the near future, the last remaining giant will be Samsung. With the rumors last year that Samsung executives joined the Avanci team, plus Samsung is also a veteran player in the patent pool, the overall probability of finally entering the pool should be very large.

Therefore, whether Huawei can join has become a very critical child. If successful, the Avanci patent pool will become an unprecedented "behemoth" that will not be monopolized.

Together, these giants will pay a lot of attention to what the rate of 5G in the car will be.

You know, Avanci's mission is not only the car market of 70 million vehicles per year, but also the number of tens of billions or even larger Internet of Things IoT, but also its goal, how to price the industry in the future, at present, it is difficult to have a second company to compete for pricing power.

It can be seen that Chinese companies can win technology and win standards by catching up, but they still need to pay more patience and effort in competing for global pricing power.