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Apple Faces Patent Lawsuit Over Siri in China

Siri was one of Apples Acquisions Not Created By Apple

Matt-M said:
The look and behavior in that video is so exactly like Siri, there are really only two possibilities:

1) Apple stole it outright from Zhi Zhen.

2) Zhi Zhen patented the basic concept in 2004, but stole the current look and feel from Apple once Siri shipped.

The discovery process should be interesting!

(P.S., my money is on #2 above)
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Siri was not created by apple they bought the rights from the founder company Siri, Inc

Siri, Inc. was founded in 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), together with Norman Winarsky from SRI International's venture group, and is named after SRI (although Kittlaus claims he wanted to name the daughter he never had "Siri", Norwegian for "beautiful woman who leads you to victory", he cites as primary "the fact that [it] is easy to spell [and] easy to say"
On October 13, 2008, Siri announced it had raised an $8.5 million Series A financing round, led by Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures. In November 2009, Siri raised a $15.5 million Series B financing round from the same investors as in their previous round, but led by Hong-Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. Dag Kittlaus left his position as CEO of Siri at Apple after the launch of the iPhone 4S.
Apple did not steal anything from anyone in this case maybe Dag and his group of engineers stole if from someone else? If so then the Chinese should be going after the former CEOs of Siri, Inc not apple?
 
A private Chinese company with zero known governmental affiliations sues Apple for what may or may not be valid claims, and somehow that gets twisted into a convoluted geopolitical discussion involving copyright issues that probably no one in this thread knows anything about. Gotta love the Macrumors forums!
 
The link below lists some Sci Fi movies that showed computers using AI many years before the so called patent that this Chinese company was awarded. I would like to see the details of this patent. Much of it will likely be able to be invalidated or worked around due to ample prior art.

http://crazy-ai.necrobones.com/
 
convergent said:
I had a long discussion with some colleagues in China on this subject when we were trying to have them work on content that required a Certificate of Originality, and they had difficulty understanding the basic concept of intellectual property rights.
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That doesn't really surprise me, because the American understanding of "intellectual property rights" is about as idiotic as it gets. There shouldn't be such a thing in the first place, because all it does is get in the way of invention and innovation. Just imagine Italy would hold a patent on the Roman alphabet or an Arabic country would hold the patent on their numbers - we wouldn't be allowed to hold this online conversation right now because we would be infringing on their patents and would have to invent an own alphabet.

The whole "intellectual property" system is absurd and should be abolished yesterday.
 
Dave.UK said:
Siri started development in 2007

The patent was issued to Zhi Zhen Internet Technology Co Ltd in 2006 after applying in 2003.

"The core technology of Siri is man-machine interaction rather than speech recognition, and that is based on the word chat robot system xiaoi patented," Mei said.
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Wrong. Siri Inc was spun off of SRI International which has been doing AI research since the end of WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International
 
mdriftmeyer said:
Wrong. Siri Inc was spun off of SRI International which has been doing AI research since the end of WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International
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So I was right in what I said, SIRI started development in 2007 after it was spun off from SRI Inc.

Where in that Wikipedia article does it state SIRI was developed prior to 2007?

"The core technology of Siri is man-machine interaction rather than speech recognition, and that is based on the word chat robot system xiaoi patented," Mei said.
 
Synchromesh said:
This is amazing! The Chinese tend to be the most blatant copyright breakers themselves and yet they have the guts to sue others. I wish all the automotive companies sued them for copying designs. That would've been an interesting day.
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I too. And Mercedes and Bentley ought to sue Hyundai for what they've done.

These guys made something generic like Cleverbot then copied Siri.
"[The Chinese service] has evolved to look quite similar to Siri"
:rolleyes:
 
thelookingglass said:
A private Chinese company with zero known governmental affiliations sues Apple for what may or may not be valid claims, and somehow that gets twisted into a convoluted geopolitical discussion involving copyright issues that probably no one in this thread knows anything about. Gotta love the Macrumors forums!
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I'd say "yup. We're through the looking glass now, people", but considering your username, it'd come across as kinda dirty and a little weird.

So I'm not gonna say it.
 
Why does it take so long for this to come up, Siri has been out for some time, were they waiting to see if it took off?
 
dec. said:
That sounds pretty interesting, especially the "interact" feature, do you have any further demonstrations, as the only video I have seen is the one in the article, which seems identical to Siri?
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Didn't you watch the video? It was fast and responsive. It read a whole paragraph of info to the user. It didn't constantly ask the user if they wanted to check the internet (just a guess based on very little info). So yes, it seemed superior.
 
Apple clearly did not think theite guy had power to fight back. The question is whe. Did this little app morph i to this graphic iteration, question of who copies whom.
 
James Craner said:
Sigh - Another day, another lawsuit. I am not saying that Zhi Zhen don't have a legitimate case
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Anyone in CHINA suing over intellectual property is kind of a hypocrisy given that country's inability to follow anyone else's intellectual property laws. :rolleyes:

But then this whole software patent thing is just plain out of control. Software should stick to copyright law. There should be no such thing as a software patent. There's too many ways to skin a software cat to lump it all into one bucket. Ultimately, if you're a small fry, a large company will probably just sue you into oblivion knowing you can't afford the court costs even if you're right. The whole system is just corrupt. :(
 
Judas1 said:
Didn't you watch the video? It was fast and responsive. It read a whole paragraph of info to the user. It didn't constantly ask the user if they wanted to check the internet (just a guess based on very little info). So yes, it seemed superior.
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I did watch it - that's why I was asking :) .
I don't speak Chinese, obviously the person is asking something about the weather, just for fun I asked Siri about the local weather today and tomorrow, it took pretty much the same time to come up with a graphical display and forecast in both cases, from there I said "show me a map", she showed me my position on a map, again a fast response time. She did fail when I said "tell me a really long story", she replied with "it was a dark and stormy night... No that's not it". Like I say, I don't know what the text is there so it's difficult to emulate but right up to that spot Siri behaves and performs pretty much identical. Not a hint of your mentioned "superiority" there...

Edit: As for voice recognition - she does well with my pretty messed up German/British/Canadian accent...
 
lucas107 said:
if this company does not have a history of ip theft then the comments are racist by your definition
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That is just complete and utter bunk. As I said, to complain solely because it is a company owned by Chinese people, and no other reason, could be considered racist. Can you point to one single person that made such a statement?

No... Instead I have seen some of the following valid discussions:

1) History of Chinese companies and courts disregarding international copyright law
2) Discussions about that time frame that this company developed its product, versus the time frame that Apple/Siri was developed both by Apple and by the company it purchased
3) Whether that company's product resembled Siri prior to Siri going public, or whether it changed to resemble Siri.

Those are all valid points of discussion, that have nothing to do with race. Otherwise, you are suggesting that noone could raise a single point of complaint/concern/discussion about ANY SINGLE COMPANY in any country other than their own, lest they are... racist. What is this world coming to.
 
James Craner said:
Sigh - Another day, another lawsuit. I am not saying that Zhi Zhen don't have a legitimate case, but it just appears that because Apple have deep pockets that everyone wants a piece.
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Yep -- and I'm confident that every time Apple settles / loses one of these bogus PRC suits others are encouraged to file. Chances of the PRC actually deciding anything in Apple's favor: roughly 0%.
 
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