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Leveraging their outstanding professional capabilities, The JunHe patent team successfully represented DJI in a first-instance administrative lawsuit concerning patent invalidity, successfully overturning the invalidity decision made by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) against DJI’s patent, thereby establishing a solid legal barrier for the protection of the client’s rights.
DJI is the patent holder of the invention titled “Non-Orthogonal Axis Carrier”, a technology widely used in the drone industry to stably support cameras and other equipment, thereby improving the filming quality of drones. DJI not only uses this patented technology in its own drone products, but also licenses it to other companies. Due to the pioneering contribution and significant commercial value of this patent, DJI has received high recognition from the Guangdong Provincial Government, and was awarded the Gold Award at the Sixth Guangdong Patent Awards in 2020.
In March 2023, an industry-related company requested the CNIPA to declare the entire patent invalid. Facing with a large amount of evidence and reasons for invalidity submitted by the requester, the CNIPA issued an invalidity decision after two rounds of oral hearings in December 2023, declaring the entire patent invalid. Given the significant commercial importance of this patent to DJI, the company was determined to protect its rights through administrative litigation. After extensively screening top firms in the industry, DJI ultimately chose the JunHe patent team to represent the case.
The patent in question and the comparative documents involve complex technologies related to aircraft gyroscopes and rotational inertia, covering intersecting fields of physics, mechanics, and communications. The JunHe Patent Team conducted an in-depth study of the case, analyzing the critical errors in the invalidity decision from both legal and technical perspectives, and designed a comprehensive and precise litigation strategy, which was highly recognized by the client. In the courtroom, the JunHe patent team innovatively used 3D simulation animations to vividly present the operational mechanisms of the patented technology and existing technology solutions, demonstrating their essential differences in an intuitive and illustrative manner to the judge and technical investigators, achieving an ideal courtroom effect and laying a solid foundation for victory.
After careful deliberation, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court fully recognized DJI’s arguments, ruling to revoke the original invalidity decision made by the CNIPA and ordering a re-examination and decision. According to statistics, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court’s rate of revoking CNIPA invalidity decisions is only about 6-7%, and the JunHe team once again successfully obtained a victory in revoking the invalidity decision. DJI highly praised the JunHe Patent Team’s profound technical expertise and superb patent legal capabilities. The success of this case also lays a solid foundation for further deepening cooperation between the JunHe Patent Team and DJI in the future.
Partners WANG, Zhaolin and WEI, Yuming led the JunHe team.