LG Innotek, which generates most of its revenue from selling camera modules for the iPhone, is now poised to compete in electric vehicle charging market with international standard essential patents on EV charger components.
The company was chosen by a standard patent licensing company (Via Licensing Alliance or Via LA) specialized in EV charging as a licensor.
A licensor refers to a person or a company that gives permission to another entity to use the patented technology and receives royalties in return. In May this year two licensing organizations — Via Licensing Corporation (Via) and MPEG LA — announced the merger to form Via Licensing Alliance LLC (Via LA), a new collaborative licensing organization with a rich portfolio of patents and intellectual property licensing programs, hundreds of licensors, and thousands of licensees.
Notably, General Electric, Philips and Mitsubishi Electric, which all had partial ownership in MPEG La, now have a stake in the new – Via LA.
Via LA has so far only registered 8 companies globally, including GE, Bosch, Siemens, and LG Innotek, as licensors in the EV charging sector.
The International standard essential patents LG Innotek was recognized for are charging control technologies (two patents) based on battery status data and a charging reservation technology (one patent). The registration has accelerated LG Innotek’s push to fully engage in the global EV component market.
LG Innotek is already fostering the future car business as a new growth driver for the company. The company is ramping up its R&D efforts in order to support control solutions of not only wired charging but also wireless charging, and to implement power conversion solutions for both parts of EVs and outdoor charging systems.
LG Innotek is taking out patents for not just essential EV technologies but also autonomous driving technologies.
In April this year, LG Innotek gained the industry attention for acquiring more than 180 patents from Argo AI, an American startup that develops autonomous vehicles and founded by veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs.
Many of the patents LG Innotek acquired are those for the LiDAR technology.
LiDAR is a sensing technology of detecting the target, distance and direction, etc. by sending the light and measuring the time taken to return. The technology is seen as a key autonomous driving system applied in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).
In a context to LiDAR, it may be recalled that in June this year, a Bengaluru-based and NVIDIA's senior executives-backed startup Minus Zero unveiled India's first autonomous/ driverless car that depends less on LiDAR and instead uses high-resolution cameras to analyse driving conditions including traffic.
Back to LG Innotek, the Korean company is bolstering its patent portfolio envisioning the future as a leader of the automotive market driven by EVs and self-driving cars. In particular, LG Innotek is leveraging an AI patent data system capable of analyzing and using patents at a speed 900 times faster than that of humans.
The company evaluates big data on global patents with 3 million new patents added every year to get an insight into technology trends and the industry. LG Innotek then explores more areas of differentiation against the existing products and reflects findings in the product development strategy.
Kim Jin-hyun, the Head of Intellectual Property Division at LG Innotek, says, “It’s crucial that we secure the proprietary technology to become the top player in the industry, so we need to systematically manage and secure the intellectual property (IP) like patents. LG Innotek will continue to offer differentiated customer value through R&D based on original IP.”
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