A report surfaced recently revealed that Coolpad Group has sued three groups of Xiaomi for patent infringement in China. This new revelation comes at a crucial time where Xiaomi in China has filed for one of the biggest IPO since 2014, which is supposedly valued north of $10 billion (Rs 67,000 crores). The group under Coolpad which filed the patent infringement suit against the Chinese smartphone giant in Hong Kong alleged that the company had been using the patent in their technologies without any authorisation. To carry out the legalities, Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co filed a lawsuit in Jiangsu province of China. The company demanded that Xiaomi put a hold on the production of some of its devices which seem to be using the multi-SIM and some User Interface technology originally developed by Coolpad. Some of the devices which have come under controversy include the Redmi Note 5 and Mi Mix 2.
Coolpad's global chief patent officer Nancy Zhang said It is because the IP (intellectual property) protection environment in China improved that Coolpad launched the lawsuit in January this year," She also denied the allegations that they were not timing the lawsuit with Xiaomi’s IPO.
Despite, a hostile movement by Coolpad, Xiaomi is still not in the defensive yet and are ready to cooperate with the authorities to get to the root of the issue. The smartphone giant also requested the patent authorities to invalidate the patent rights, which are being talked about in the lawsuit.
This is not the first time that Coolpad has filed a lawsuit against Xiaomi, the Shenzen based 25-year old smartphone maker also went the legal way against Xiaomi a few months ago in January. It is also noteworthy that Coolpad, which was a fully owned subsidiary of LeEco had been under a financial burden from one and a half year. Later, LeEco sold off its entire stake in the company. Coolpad shares have thus been suspended since March 2017, and the company has failed to report its 2017 result and has just filed its 2016 results in April. Apart from the suffering a loss of HKD 4.38 billion in 2016, the company is also going through audit troubles.
