- The electric vehicle industry relies on a number of parts to keep the cogs turning, including batteries, electric drive motors, critical materials, and more.
- However, an important aspect that is often overlooked is cellular connectivity.
- With electric vehicles and EV chargers alike now heavily reliant on internet connectivity to improve user experience and connectivity, which businesses can help fulfill this crucial legal piece in this puzzle?
This article was sponsored by Avanci, a World EV Day™ 2025 partner. Avanci offers essential cellular connectivity patent licenses to businesses across the industry, ensuring that their vehicles and chargers are licensed for the connectivity they use in an increasingly online world.
The last two decades have seen a dramatic shift when it comes to consumer technology, with most of us now carrying a mobile computer in our pockets – a smartphone – that is more powerful than the one that helped put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon back in 1969.
The democratisation of these devices has relied heavily on the global open standards that allow these devices to communicate with one another (3G, 4G, 5G, and coming soon, 6G). Each iteration of this cellular network technology has brought faster speeds, new features and more reliable connections.
However, what’s often less understood, particularly when it comes to cellular connectivity, is that those connected devices also rely on patented technologies essential to standards – known as standard essential patents (SEPs) – which must be licensed.
The licensing of cellular patents began in the mobile phone industry, but is now commonplace across the EV and wider automotive space too, as well as other Internet of Things (IoT) markets.
It’s important that businesses making products such as EV chargers using these patented technologies understand their responsibilities. There are dozens of patent owners involved, and negotiating licenses with each individually could be time consuming and expensive. Without a license, the product company, or even the charge point operator which is using unlicensed equipment, could face potential risks such as business interruptions or damage to their reputation.
This is where Avanci, a partner of World EV Day™ in 2025, is ready to step in and assist. Since 2016, Avanci has offered a one-stop licensing solution for connected vehicles, assisting OEMs around the world.
By simplifying the licensing of these crucial patents with a one-stop agreement covering dozens of licensors, Avanci is ensuring that manufacturers of EVs, EV chargers, and charge point operators can ensure their connected devices are efficiently licensed at published rates, giving them predictability on cost while reducing business risks.
