In the era of internet-connected vehicles, Europe’s carmakers are embroiled in intellectual property battles with some of the region’s biggest telecoms groups. Looming behind those conflicts is fear about the rising dominance of China.

Companies from Asia’s biggest economy, led by Huawei, have filed a deluge of patents around the essential technology that allows products, from cars to mobile devices, to access 4G, 5G and WiFi networks. Anything that connects to the internet must secure a licence for these so-called standard essential patents (SEPs) from technology creators.

Chinese companies were behind 65 per cent of filings of SEPs last year to standards body ETSI, according to data collected by Clarivate, up from 37 per cent in 2019. EU commissioner Thierry Breton this week noted that since 2014, the share of SEPs globally held by European companies dropped from 22 to 15 per cent, while Chinese companies’ doubled.