A Shanghai company filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Beijing-based Patent Reexamination Board (PRB) of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) over the patent authority's decision to validate the patent of the iPhone exterior design.

Shanghai Luoen Tech-info Ltd claimed the exterior design of the iPhone, a popular product of Apple Inc, is too similar to that of the DMB MP3 player created by LG and another two handset products (818 and 828+) created by Dopod, all of which had already got valid patents before Apple made the patent application.

Luoen Tech-info requested a reexamination by the PRB in November 2008. The PRB responded by maintaining the patent was valid in August 2009.

In the document filed in Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court on Tuesday, Luoen Tech-info stated that validating the iPhone's patent "will severely damage the public interest".

The lawyer representing the Shanghai company, surnamed Zhao, told METRO he was unable to disclose any further details until the lawsuit is settled. The PRB refused to comment for the same reason.

Zhang Wenjing, a lawyer with Beijing-based law firm King & Bond, said: "Some technical difficulties may exist in identifying exterior design patent infringement, as the criteria of the two sides might not be the same."

Disputes over intellectual property infringements are increasing nowadays, she added.

Notwithstanding the "public interest" cited in the iPhone lawsuit, she said that most cases are usually motivated by an enterprise's economic interests.

"Patents, as a kind of intangible asset, afford significant economic benefits as they help the product stand out among other similar products and therefore gain market share," she said.

The lucrative mobile electronics sector is proving a key battleground.

The iPhone, which is popular around the world, has faced a number of patent infringement accusations. Apple filed a countersuit last November against Nokia, a move that came after the Finnish phone maker accused it last October of violating 10 patents.
                                                                                                 Source: China Daily