Beijing Court Rules Against Apple in Siri Patent Case

Apple has lost an important patent infringement lawsuit in China. A Beijing court upheld the validity of the Chinese company’s patent, which is bad news for Apple, as it can be held liable for infringing intellectual property rights, reports Reuters.

Apple initially sued the Patent Review Committee under the State Intellectual Property Office and Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology company in February, alleging the Chinese company was infringing its Siri patents.

The case between Apple and Zhizhen began two years ago when the latter, being the developer of voice recognition technology Xiao i Robot, alleged Apple was violating its patent granted in 2006. You may recall that Siri came to life in 2007 as Siri Inc. and was acquired by Apple three years later. It debuted on the iPhone 4S in 2011.

Xiao i Robot began its life in 2003 as a chat bot for MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and later became available on iOS and Android, and bore similarities to Siri. The 2012 trial “ended” with no ruling, so Apple went to the Patent Review Committee to invalidate the patent, but since the Committee upheld the patent, it sued both the State Intellectual Property Office and Zhizhen.