Based on statistics provided by the Ministry of Public Security, the rate of violent crimes dropped to 15.6 percent in the first quarter of 2015. (Photo : Reuters)
The Beijing High People’s Court has ruled in favor of Apple, Inc. in a patent case involving voice recognition technology over a government agency and a technology company in Shanghai, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The court decision, issued on April 21, Tuesday, is a reversal of the ruling made by Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court last July against Apple, which sued the Patent Review Committee under the State Intellectual Property Office and Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co. Ltd., which was accused of infringing on Apple's copyright for its voice recognition software, Siri.
According to the report, Apple and Zhizhen have been engaged in a patent infringement since June 2012, when Zhizhen, which developed the speech recognition technology Xiao i Robot, filed a case against Apple for infringement of intellectual property rights.
The Shanghai-based company claimed that Siri technology violated its patent for "a type of instant messaging chat robot system," the report added.
Xiao i Robot was initially used in 2003 as a chat bot for Yahoo Messenger, MSN, and other chat programs, and later expanded to include iOS and Android, which has a striking resemblance to Siri.
Siri, on the other hand, was first developed in 2007 by Siri, Inc., a start-up company acquired by Apple in 2010. It made its debut in 2011, following the release of the iPhone 4S.
The report said that Apple applied for registration to the Patent Review Committee under the State Intellectual Property Office to have the Xiao i Robot patent invalidated. But the committee supported Xiao i Robot, which prompted the U.S.-based tech giant to file a case against the committee and the Shanghai company.
