Does Expression Appearing after Pinyin Entry Constitute Infringement?

Beijing Intellectual Property Court recently concluded a series of patent infringement cases between Baidu and Sogou in the first instance.

Baidu stated that after entering the Chinese phonetic string “guzhang” into the Wechat interface, pictures of “applause” appeared. This fell into the scope of its patent protection. After pre-trial cross-examination, talks and court sessions, the two parties fully expressed their opinions on the interpretation of patent claims, the comparison of infringement technologies, the prior art defense and the calculation of damages. The intellectual property court rejected Baidu’s claim.

During the trial, the two plaintiffs claimed that the “claim 3” of the patent rights involved could be divided into five technical features. Among them, the “feature 3” of the “claim 3” of the patent involved is described as follows: “The method also includes: when the user inputs the text including the expression phrase, the corresponding expression and the expression phrase are provided.”

For example, in the PC infringement comparison, after entering the “daku” pinyin string in the QQ dialogue box, the “big crying” expression and the text waiting options appeared. In the mobile phone infringement comparison, after inputting the “guzhang” pinyin string in the WeChat interface, the “applause” expression and the text waiting options appeared. The intellectual property court held that the expression appeared after the user entered the pinyin string, and the situation is different from that claimed in the plaintiff’s patent claims.

Besides, the court also compared other characteristics, and finally determined that the relevant content of the Sogou input method did not fall within the relevant protection scope of the patent rights involved, and did not constitute infringement, and rejected the plaintiff’s claim.

It is reported that among the patent infringement cases between Baidu and Sogou, except for one case that is still in the trial of the intellectual property court, all the rest have been concluded.

October 4, 2019

Source: Beijing Youth Daily

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