After settling Proview, Apple has got another Chinese lawsuit on its hands, and this time it’s to do with Siri, MICGadget reports. Filed by Shanghai based Zhizhen Network Technology on June 26, it relates to patents filed for “a type of instant messaging chat bot system” called Xiao Bot in 2004, which were approved in 2006.
MICGadget:
The lawsuit that Zhizhen filed is not going against the trademark of Siri, but the introduction that Apple used on their China’s official website to explain what Siri is, which says “it (siri) can understand what you say and what you’re asking for, and it can find the answer that you are looking for on the web”. However, we cannot find the Siri’s introduction on Apple’s China site anymore, seems like it had been pulled down already to avoid infringement.
Zhizhen did try and resolve the issue outside of the courtroom in May 2012, but after Apple failed to respond, the situation has now moved into pre trial negotiations.
Apple introduced Siri to China in January 2012 and announced iOS 6 with full support for Chinese services like Baidu at WWDC, so it will be interesting to see how this develops. How many more lawsuits can Apple face in China?!
