A Beijing court has ruled in favor of a Chinese company and a government agency over Apple for a patent on speech recognition technology that is similar to what Siri uses.
The court upheld the patent filed by Zhizhen Internet Technology, clearing the path for the Shanghai-based company to continue its case against Apple for intellectual property rights infringement.
Apple decided to take Zhizhen and the Patent Review Committee of the State Intellectual Property Office of China to court to seek an invalidation of the speech recognition technology patent held by Zhizhen. However, the Beijing First Intermediate Court ruled in favor Zhizhen, according to a report by a state newspaper on Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, we were not aware of Zhizhen's patent before we introduced Siri (speech recognition technology) and we do not believe we are using this patent," wrote an Apple spokeswoman based in Beijing in an e-mail to Reuters.
Apple will appeal the case to the Beijing Higher People's Court, but the spokeswoman said that the copany will still remain open to reasonable discussions for a settlement with Zhizhen.
Zhizhen filed a case against Apple in 2012 for the infringement of intellectual property rights, claiming that the Siri technology that Apple uses in its devices violates the patents held by Zhizhen for its voice systems since 2006.
Zhizhen developed the Xiao i Robot voice recognition technology, which was launched in 2003 as a chat bot for Yahoo Messenger, MSN and other networks. The product has since expanded to the iOS and Android platforms, while sharing many similarities with Apple's Siri.
Siri, on the other hand, was developed by Siri Inc., which was a start-up company that was acquired by Apple back in 2010. Siri first appeared on Apple's iPhone in the fall of 2011.
Apple has been the target of many lawsuits filed in China. One of the more recent ones was in June, when Yishijia Network Technology filed a lawsuit against the tech giant and Woshang Information Technology for the usage of a trademark owned by Yishijia on the Apple app store. Yishijia is seeking compensation of over 100 million yuan, or about $16 million.
The dispute started in April, when Yishijia tried to upload the Homevv online shooping platform mobile app to the Apple app store. The application to upload the app, however, was rejected by Apple because the Woshang app, which bears the trademark held by Yishijia, was already uploaded.
Yishijia, owners of the Homevv trademark since 2010, requested several times for Apple to remove the Woshang app but was rejected.
