Apple recently lost the first stage of a patent infringement case in China after a Beijing court ruled that the speech-recognition patent held by a Chinese company is valid.
Shanghai-based Zhizhen Network Technology asserted their speech-recognition technology patent against Apple’s Siri voice assistant. Apple argued that Zhizhen’s patent was invalid, but the court decided that Zhizhen’s patent is valid and Apple will now have to defend itself against the accusation that it copied this technology to develop Siri.
Though many will interpret this as a bad sign for non-Chinese patent holders, Forbes Contributor Tim Worstall suggests that the rise of valuable intellectual property from within China may signal the beginning of proper intellectual property law enforcement there, which is good news for inventors everywhere.
