It is understood that since October 2015, Sogou has filed a patent infringement litigation request for two consecutive rounds, alleging that Baidu infringed its patent rights. The case involved a total of 17 related patents, claiming a total amount of up to 260 million yuan. Due to the large number of cases and the huge amount of claims, the industry has been called 'the first case of Internet patents'.
A method and system for retrieving a candidate word sequence in a Chinese input method, a method for inputting a network resource address, an input method system, and a system for retrieving a candidate word sequence in a Chinese input method for the highly anticipated 'a system and method for updating a Chinese word database.' In the case, the court pronounced: 'Reject all claims filed by the plaintiff Beijing Sogou Technology Development Co., Ltd., Baidu's input law does not infringe on rights', and the litigation initiator Sogou lost 14 games in a row, squandering 11 patents.
Among them, the most well-known is the 'Method and System for Entering Word Art or Graphics into Applications' (Patent No. 200610127154.2) Patent Litigation - Since the amount of a single patent claim amounted to 100 million yuan, the lawsuit was also called '000 yuan price patent case'.
In the face of Sogou's prosecution, Baidu filed a patent invalidation request with the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office.
According to the Chinese patent law, when there is a dispute over a patent right, the parties have the right to file a patent invalidation request with the Patent Reexamination Board, requesting the review of the validity of the patent involved. If the patent is found to be inconsistent with the patent law and its implementation details The conditions for the granting of a patent right may be declared invalid after review by the Patent Reexamination Board, and all legal rights enjoyed by the patent right will be lost.
After the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office has successively conducted public hearings and judgments, of the 17 patents sued by Sogou in all of Baidu’s lawsuits, 11 patents were declared invalid or partially invalid, including the above-mentioned '000 million yuan patent price case. Afterwards, Sogou withdrew 10 other lawsuits including the 'Yuan Million Dollar Price Case', setting a record of '14 losing streak'.