5G-equipment vendor Nokia and automotive OEM Daimler have signed a patent licensing agreement that will pave the way for mobile telecommunications technology to be ported to Daimler vehicles.
Under the agreement, all pending litigation between the companies — including the complaint by Daimler against Nokia to the European Commission — have been settled.
The terms of the agreement remain confidential, but could potentially include future technologies such as 5G, which would allow for faster communications inside vehicles for infotainment, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) systems, telematics and navigation.
Daimler has been sued in several German courts for refusing to buy licenses for technology that connects in-car navigation and entertainment systems to the internet. Several of these technologies are tied to semi- and fully-autonomous driving.
According to the Financial Times, a few judgments went against Daimler last year that could prevent the carmaker from building or selling cars equipped with tech that uses Nokia patents.
Current and future vehicles include more electronics in every model and this is only expected to increase as electrification becomes more popular and the advent of self-driving cars leads to more semiconductor and technology content being included in vehicles moving forward.
This is one of the reasons that semiconductor demand is expected to increase 5% over the next decade.
