Siri was accused of infringing domestic "small i"

Earlier, a Shanghai-based company developed its own voice system to obtain a patent on the grounds that Apple filed a lawsuit to the court, while Apple applied to the State Intellectual Property Office to invalidate the patent of the Shanghai company. If the application was not approved Next, Apple sued the Patent Reexamination Board to the Municipal Intermediate Court. Yesterday morning, in the administrative proceedings involving Siri's patent right, the City Court of First Instance handed down the first instance verdict of Apple's defeat.

Siri was accused of infringing domestic "small i"

In 2011, Siri technology was first used on the iPhone 4S, turning the iPhone into an intelligent robot. With Siri, users can read sms via cell phone, introduce restaurants, ask about the weather and more. Siri can support natural language input, but also continue to learn new voices and intonations to provide a conversational response. According to statistics, at present the technology in Android, WP, desktop and iOS on a total of about 1 million users.

However, just as Siri interviewed and became highly sought after, Shanghai Zhizhen considered Siri to be very similar to the company's "Little i Robot" patent application in 2004. All of them are intelligent dialogue robots that provide intelligent analysis and retrieval services. To this end, in March 2013, Zhizhen Company prosecuted Apple Inc. to a Shanghai court for patent infringement. At present, the case has not yet been concluded. The industry said that in this case, such as Apple lost, Siri technology will no longer be used in mainland China.

Apple applied to confirm the patent is invalid

In order to give its name to Siri, Apple filed a "Decision on Review of Demand for Invalidation Claims" with the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office, requesting the Patent Reexamination Board to determine that the patent of the VoiceZone's speech recognition is invalid. However, in September 2013, the Patent Reexamination Board made its decision No. 21307 in support of the "Little i Robot" patent.

Because of dissatisfaction with the decision of the Patent Reexamination Board, Apple filed an administrative lawsuit, requiring the verdict to conclude that the above decision was invalid, and Shanghai Zhizhen also participated in the proceedings as a third party.

In February this year, the case was held for the first time in a courthouse. Apple's 28-page indictment stated that there were issues such as the publicity of patent infringement and the unclear scope of the claim protection. The fact that the Patent Reexamination Board made a decision Determine the error, so requested the revocation. However, the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office holds that the decision of invalidation request review is made on the basis of the text of the patent authorization announcement, the patent specification is fully disclosed and the corresponding rights protection scheme can be implemented, and the patent invalidation reason raised by Apple fails to be established. Third person Zhizhen company also said that the "small i robot" is an independent intellectual property rights, the patent specification open, the product of advanced technology, innovation, and asked the court rejected Apple's claim.

Apple Inc. Appealed in Court

Due to the special case, a court formed a five-judge collegial panel to hear the case. Three of the judges had a computer professional background. During the trial, each party of the defense stated its opinions on the six major issues of controversy, including whether the patent right in the case is fully publicized, whether the scope of the protection requested by the claim is clear, whether the claim lacks the necessary technical features, whether the claim is able to obtain the specification Support, whether the patent is novel or creative with respect to the comparative document.

After nearly six months of trial, a hospital yesterday publicly announced the case. In order to analyze the cases from the technical and legal aspects, the Court of Appeal produced a 39-page verdict up to nearly 30,000 words. In this ruling, none of Apple's claims was supported, and neither did the company's claim. In the first instance, the first Intermediate Court upheld the decision made by the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office. After the verdict, Apple said in court that it would file an appeal with the Beijing Higher People's Court.

Morning News reporter He Xin