Context: Avanci regularly announces new licensees, such as ADS-TEC Energy, an electric-vehicle charger maker (October 31, 2024 ip fray article), and new licensors, such as SOLiD (November 11, 2024 LinkedIn post by Avanci).
What’s new: Avanci’s Aftermarket program, which launched in early 2023 and covers certain types of devices (monitoring, infotainment and other multi-function products) that are not pre-installed when connected cars ship, has now been joined by two German makers of ticketing solutions, krauth technology GmbH (from the Heidelberg area) and Systemtechnik GmbH (from the East German state of Thuringia) (November 12, 2024 LinkedIn post by Avanci).
Direct impact: Avanci Aftermarket now has 9 licensees and 47 licensors.
Wider ramifications: When reading about German Avanci Aftermarket licensees, readers familiar with that market might have intuitively thought that one of them would be Continental, a company that unsuccessfully sued Avanci for a component-level license in the U.S., followed by a Delaware state lawsuit against Avanci licensor Nokia that in some ways represented a rehash of the federal lawsuit against Avanci itself, but went nowhere (July 18, 2024 ip fray article). Continental makes not only telecommunications control units (TCUs) that are incorporated into cars but also aftermarket products such as fleet management solutions (Continental website). It is notably absent from Avanci Aftermarket’s list of licensees.
Avanci’s LinkedIn post about the two new German licensees contains a quote from Qudus Olaniran, Vice President of Avanci Aftermarket:
“Adding Krauth Technology and Systemtechnik strengthens our Avanci Aftermarket program. We’re excited to work with both companies, alongside our existing participants, as the rapid growth of this program continues.”
Given that this program has been around for more than 20 months and that Continental has been saying publicly for more than five years that it needs standard-essential patent (SEP) licenses to have freedom to operate, the question is why they haven’t taken a license covering their aftermarket products.
The company colloquially referred to as Conti remains very active in SEP policy. It regularly participates in different events where it voices its demands for exhaustive component-level SEP licenses, and has recently started sponsoring an Apple-led astoturfing operation that absurdly claims to defend the interests of small and medium-sized app developers and IoT product makers when engaging in lobbying with respect to automotive SEP licensing (September 12, 2024 ip fray article).
Some SEP holders are known to be prepared to license component makers. Such deals have happened, and have in fact been announced. But to date not a single license deal between Conti and a cellular SEP holder has become known, regardless of product category. If Conti wanted, they could get 47 SEP licenses for their aftermarket products in one fell swoop. But they haven’t taken an Avanci Aftermarket license, nor has there ever been any announcement of a bilateral license. Is Conti just talking the talk, but not walking the walk? And if so, how much weight should EU policy makers give Conti’s claims and demands?