Context: This is just a very brief follow-up to our April 15, 2026 article, Multi-brand truck maker PACCAR apparently took Avanci license — Acer’s Munich case withdrawn on eve of trial and also to yesterday’s opinion piece, Patent pools have facilitated hundreds of thousands of licensor-licensee relationships, obviated thousands of lawsuits:
What’s new: Yesterday (April 21, 2026), Longhorn IP’s L2 Mobile Technologies withdrew its case in the Eastern District of Texas against PACCAR (stipulation of dismissal further below).
Direct impact & wider ramifications: When two patent holders who are licensors to the same pool withdraw enforcement actions against the same defendant in short succession, the only plausible explanation (given that each litigation has its own dynamics, timelines etc.) is that the implementer settled both disputes through a pool license (here, Avanci Vehicle). The same pattern (albeit with more patentees involved) was seen five years ago when Tesla took an Avanci 4G license.
Here’s the stipulated dismissal without prejudice:
The reason they withdrew “without prejudice” is presumably so that Longhorn can refile if PACCAR’s current Avanci license expires at some point and new litigation is necessary. It is unlikely, but one can never rule it out. Patent pools sometimes distinguish between licensees in good standing and those who are “out of compliance”.
ip fray always informs of important withdrawals that point to settlements unless there are indications that a withdrawal is case-specific and has no further significance. We must take the risk that in some cases, settlements still take longer. In the case of Samsung and ZTE, it is obvious in retrospect that there must have been some settlement dynamics (October 23, 2025 ip fray article), given that the Munich I Regional Court is now taking those cases to trial, a few months later. The timing of the cancelation of two Munich trials last year, in the late afternoon before the first of the trials, was also an indication. We have some experience with litigation and and licensing, so we can often tell a purely procedurally motivated cancelation or withdrawal from something that almost certainly has a commercial reason. That assessment is multifactorial. It involves timing, the type of procedural action, the known or likely status of licensing discussions, the parties’ past behavior in similar situations, and more.