Apple hit with $1.4B lawsuit over alleged Siri patent infringement by Chinese company

A Chinese AI company hit Apple with a massive lawsuit on Monday over a purported patent infringement. The company, which is known as Shanghai Zhizhen or Xiao-i, is suing Apple for 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) over Siri, Apple’s voice assistant technology, which it claims infringes upon a patent it applied for back in 2004 and was granted in 2009.

In a social media post, first reported by Reuters, the company said it was asking Apple “to stop patent infringement on its smart assistant product Siri, including but not limited to stopping the manufacturing, using, promising to sell, selling and importing products.”

This lawsuit is not the first run-in the two companies have over this particular patent. Xiao-i originally lodged its complaint back in 2012, but Apple filed a request to have the patent invalidated. The discussion over whether the patent is valid has continued for eight years, but last month China’s Supreme People’s Court ruled in Xiao-i’s favor, reversing a previous decision reached by Beijing High Court.

Xiao-i is using this latest decision as fuel to renew its original patent infringement claim. The company, which specializes in natural language processing, said it filed the formal lawsuit with Shanghai High People’s Court.

Apple did not immediately respond to request for comment.