US District Court Judge Barbara Lynn (Barbara? Lynn) said in the ruling dismissing the lawsuit that Avanci? LLC is a patent licensing platform composed of technology patent owners such as Qualcomm, Nokia and Sharp. Negotiating a license agreement with an automobile manufacturer (rather than a component manufacturer) does not violate the anti-monopoly law.
Fanqi? LLC uses the key patented technology of 4G communication industry standard, charging $65,438+05 per vehicle, and is pricing the next generation wireless technology 5G. 5G is expected to change everything at present, from driverless cars to robotic surgery. The member companies of the platform have developed standardized technologies to enable electronic products to work together, and agreed to license any related patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, namely the so-called FRAND. However, this term has never been defined, and the mainland believes that Avanci's authorization plan is neither fair nor reasonable.
Traditionally, automobile manufacturers let their parts manufacturers deal with patent licensing issues, thus avoiding infringement lawsuits. Mainland China provided automotive telematics control components to Daimler Group at a unit price of $65,438+000, but the company thought that charging $65,438+05 per vehicle would exceed its profit.
In dismissing the lawsuit, Lynn partially relied on a judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals, which dismissed the antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against Qualcomm. The ruling in this case shows that Qualcomm has the right to collect royalties from the final products (not parts).
In addition, Avanci's request to dismiss the lawsuit was supported by the antitrust department of the US Department of Justice, which wrote to the judge in February, saying that any violation of FRAND's obligations was a contract dispute, not an antitrust case.
The case is part of a series of high-profile lawsuits between Daimler and its parts manufacturers in the United States and Europe, as well as the telecommunications industry. Previously, Nokia won the case in Germany. In this regard, Avanci founder and CEO Kassim? Alfalahi said in a statement: "This ruling further confirms that Avanci's one-stop licensing solution for the automobile industry complies with US antitrust laws."
Editor's comment:
The anti-monopoly dispute between Continental Group and Qualcomm and other communication companies has been going on for a long time, and now the American court has officially made a final judgment on this unjust case. The necessary patent licensing of communication technology standards has always been an unavoidable problem. The technologies used by technology enterprises and mobile telecom operators in navigation systems, vehicle-to-vehicle communication and self-driving cars are playing an increasingly important role in the automobile industry. For this reason, as the licensee of the essential patent of the 5G communication standard, the automobile manufacturers are also quite concerned about this incident, which is why this matter has received such high attention. (Source: carfine Compilation/car home? Li Na)