Beijing court overturns ruling that said Apple's iPhone 6 violated a defunct Chinese phone maker's design patent
Beijing Court quashes city's intellectual property bureau's ruling that US tech giant had violated defunct Shenzhen firm's design patent — A Beijing court has overturned …
Context & Ripple Effects
In mid-2016, Beijing's intellectual property bureau ruled that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus infringed a design patent held by a now-defunct Shenzhen phone maker and ordered Apple to halt sales in the capital — an order Apple ignored while appealing, with devices remaining on shelves throughout the 2016 sales ban. Today's decision by the Beijing court formally quashes that ruling, ending the case on appeal.
First-order effects
- Apple can continue selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in Beijing without the design-patent infringement finding hanging over them, and the defunct Shenzhen claimant loses its principal remedy against the devices.
Second-order effects
- The reversal does not close off the broader threat model: less than two years later a Chinese court granted Qualcomm a preliminary injunction blocking iPhone 6S-through-X sales, showing handset makers still face patent-based sales bans in China from better-resourced litigants.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward Chinese courts functioning as an arena where product-sales bans serve as leverage in global licensing fights — while the US Supreme Court's move to throw out Samsung's $399M penalty in its design-patent clash with Apple suggests both jurisdictions are recalibrating how far design patents reach.
The trend: Smartphone patent disputes are increasingly being fought through court-ordered sales bans in China, with appellate rulings determining whether such bans stick.