The road to patent disputes in eight years
According to the patent litigation query function of Smart Bud global patent database, in August 2 004, Shanghai Ying Si Software Technology Co., Ltd. and Hui Yuan, as patent applicants, filed a patent application for "Chat Robot System" and obtained patent authorization in July 2 009. 20 10, Apple buys Siri. Inc bought it for $200 million. On 2 0 1 1 year 1 month, Shanghai Winsome software transferred the patent right to Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology Co., Ltd. (small I robot). In 65438+February of the same year, Apple launched Siri (Intelligent Assistant) on its released iphone4S mobile phone for the first time, and then installed Siri (Intelligent Assistant) in iphone5, ipad3, ipad4, ipad mini, iTouch4 and other products.
Figure 1: Application and Transfer Process of "Chat Robot System"
Fig. Records of the above patent litigation in Smart Bud global patent database.
The patent specification shows that this patent relates to a chat robot system, which has a communication module, an artificial intelligence server, a query server, a game server and a corresponding database. Users can have various conversations with chat bots through instant messaging platform or short message platform. Chat robot has certain artificial intelligence and powerful information service functions, such as chatting, information inquiry, personal assistant, game interaction and the supplement to the functions of instant messaging platform.
Figure 3: Attached drawings of patent documents (partial)
According to Zhizhen Intelligent Network, this patent is one of the basic patents of human-computer interactive intelligent robot in China, and it has completely independent intellectual property rights. Earlier, Apple said that Siri didn't contain the functions contained in its patent, which were related to games and instant messaging, and an independent appraisal agency certified by the Supreme People's Court concluded that Apple didn't infringe the technology of the small robot. Apple has not yet responded to the ban application filed by Zhisheng Intelligent Network.
Apple has fought many battles in patent litigation.
In Apple's decades of development history, the above-mentioned patent litigation with Xiaoyi Robot is only a small part of its experience. According to the data of Wisdom Bud, among 1 26 countries/regions in the world, Apple and its affiliated companies * * involved 1 49 patent lawsuits with published results, with an average duration of about 1 6 months, among which more than 80 lawsuits were defendants. Through the analysis of the above litigation, we can know that Apple's patent litigation in recent years involves 1 86 patents, mainly in the fields of interaction, display, power supply voltage, semiconductors, digital images, computer systems and so on.
Figure 4: Technical fields involved in Apple patent litigation.
Long-term litigation cases may involve a lot of preparatory work, and their unpredictable litigation results and outsourced legal advice may lead to high litigation costs. Therefore, patents involving long-term litigation cases represent one of the most valuable technologies of the company to a certain extent, and the company is willing to invest more time and money to win the ownership of patent rights.
From this perspective, Apple's longest lawsuit is the "century patent case" filed as the plaintiff in April 2 0 1 1. The defendant in this case was Samsung Electronics, and it was finally closed in June 2 0 18. The total litigation time is over 8 6 months (about 7 years). The lawsuit involves 65,438+04 products such as Samsung Captivate and two 7 patents such as "Graphical User Interface for Display Screen or Part of it" owned by Apple (publication number: USD6 17334S 1+0). In the end, Apple and Samsung announced a settlement on patent litigation.
Figure 5: Apple's patent litigation time ranking
Patent litigation is usually inseparable from market competition. In many patent lawsuits, on the basis of maintaining fairness and justice, both the original defendant and the defendant pursue more to achieve their own market competition goals, or to gain greater market share, or to prevent competitors from going public, or to win another lawsuit and be forced to fight back.