Context: Avanci Vehicle 5G, which launched in August 2023, has forged ahead quite significantly in recent months, with Lenovo, Quectel (July 17, 2025 ip fray article), and Toyota all joining as licensors since July (October 10, 2025 ip fray article). The latter is now the first company to be listed twice on Avanci Vehicle’s 4G and 5G pages — as a licensor and as a licensee. And, as of July, Avanci had licensed 225 million connected vehicles through its 4G and 5G programs – with General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford, Volvo Cars, Polestar (May 8, 2024 ip fray article), Honda (Avanci LinkedIn post), Volvo Group, Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan Motor Corporation, and its luxury vehicle subsidiary INFINITI Motor Company (April 29, 2025 ip fray article) all signed up as licensees to its 5G Vehicle program over the last year.
What’s new: Dolby Laboratories is now also listed as a licensor on both of Avanci’s 4G and 5G Vehicle programs (Avanci 5G Vehicle page and Avanci 4G Vehicle page). The web archive indicates that Dolby signed up to each program as a licensor between October 10 and today. In a statement today, Avanci said: “Avanci is happy to have very recently welcomed Dolby as a licensor in our 4G and 5G Vehicle programs.”
Direct impact: Avanci Vehicle 4G now has over 60 licensors and 45 licensees, while its 5G program has 85 licensors and 38 licensees.
Wider ramifications: The move is unexpected, given Dolby’s already significant role in other patent pools. The company not only operates as a licensor in patent pools such as Access Advance’s Video Distribution patent pool (July 1, 2025 ip fray article), and HEVC and VVC programs, Sisvel’s VP9, AV1, and Cellular IoT programs, and Vectis in its Opus program, but it is also a majority stockholder and licensor in Via Licensing Alliance, which it co-owns with Philips and Mitsubishi. Furthermore, Dolby holds a minority ownership interest in Access Advance (September 27, 2024 Dolby 10-K Form).
In an exclusive interview with ip fray in March, Dolby’s General Counsel Andy Sherman emphasized the fact that the company is a huge fan of patent pools (March 31, 2025 ip fray article).
Leveraging collaborative, multi-party licensing structures is a core way in which Dolby runs its business, he noted at the time.
Mr. Sherman was commenting on the expansion of partnerships in Asia and the challenges that come with it when he said that “having a holistic view across territories is important when you are a global licensor”. But he believes patent pools are uniquely suited to address issues like this:
“[They] are uniquely suited to bring folks across the globe together across borders. These programs are inherently global – licensors are from every region of the world, and so are licensees, and these structures are really intended to create a bridge between licensors and licensees independent of region.”
As these pool structures expand, however, it becomes more difficult to get alignment among licensors, he added. “You’ve got different diverging interests.”