Connected cars patent disputes carry echoes of battles past

02 May 2019 00:00

Duration: 17:34

As cars integrate ever more technology, a legal fight is brewing over whether the holders of connectivity-related patents should offer licenses to the makers of the relevant car parts, or of the cars as a whole. With parallels to the “smartphone wars” of the past decade, this new front will strain the complex relationships between carmakers and their suppliers and pit industrial giants such as Daimler and Nokia against each other. It will also test the limits of antitrust law, with patent holders being accused of withholding licenses.

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Matthew Newman
Michael Acton

Matthew Newman Chief Correspondent

Matthew Newman

Matthew Newman is a chief correspondent for MLex and writes about data protection, privacy, telecoms, cyber security and artificial intelligence. Matthew began his journalism career in 1991 in community newspapers. He worked as a reporter in Riga, Latvia in 1993 and then moved to Chicago where he covered local news. In 1995, he became a personal finance reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, and was then transferred to Brussels in 1999. He specialized in EU regulatory... Read more

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Michael Acton Senior Correspondent

Michael Acton

Michael is a senior correspondent for MLex in San Francisco, where he moved in 2020 after working in our Brussels bureau. Before joining MLex, he reported on EU politics as the Financial Times’ Nico Colchester Fellow in Brussels. Michael has a degree in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge, and a degree in History and French from University College London and Paris IV Sorbonne.

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