Earlier, media reports said that Chairman of the Coworth Group, Qian Dongqi, said in an interview with the media at the end of 2014 that as of November 2013, Cobos had applied for 682 patents at home and abroad, including 66 foreign patents.
From this point of view, in the more than three years, the number of company patents 'disappeared' by 75, and the R&D expenses began to decline from 2016.
It is noteworthy that, in addition to the 'disappearing' patent, as of the signing date of the prospectus, there are still a number of outstanding patent-related disputes in Coworth, including two patent disputes owned by the company, which together infringe the patent rights of others. Disputes and three patent disputes as third parties.
Specifically, at the beginning of 2013, Dongguan Wanjin Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. proposed the invention patent owned by Kewos Robotics Technology to the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office: Automatically moved ground processing device (patent number: 200910115030.6) invalidation request. On July 1, 2013, the Patent Re-examination Board of the Intellectual Property Office issued the Decision of Review of Request for Invalidation and decided to maintain the patent right of the patent. After two rounds of trials, the case has been transferred to the Patent Reexamination Board for retrial.
A similar case took place again in 2017. In February 2017, Gao Botong, a natural person, filed an invalidation claim against the Patent Reexamination Board on the patent of ZL201410038854.9 under the name of Kovos. At present, the dispute is in the trial stage of the Patent Reexamination Board.
In addition, Dyson Technology has a number of product design patent rights disputes owned by Dyson Technology, which together with Coworth Electric, Suzhou Jieshang, Cobos Limited, total compensation of 3 million.
Coworth also stated that if in the related disputes and disputes, the judiciary is finally found to be the fault party or the relevant claim has not been supported by the intellectual property authority, the company may face the risk of financial compensation, the suspension of production of related products, and the abandonment of intellectual property rights. As a result, it has an adverse effect on the company's performance.
It is understood that Covos is mainly engaged in the development, design, production and sales of various types of home service robots, clean household appliances, and other intelligent home appliances and related components. It is one of the world's leading home service robot manufacturers. A complete family service robot product line including sweeping robots, window cleaning robots, air purification robots, and housekeeper robots, as well as a variety of clean small household appliance product lines.
According to the prospectus, from 2014 to 2016 and from January to June 2017, Cobos' operating revenue was respectively 2.314 billion yuan, 2.695 billion yuan, 3.277 billion yuan, and 1.966 billion yuan, which showed a continuous increase. Among them, service robots gradually grew. As a key business of Coworth, they accounted for 38.02%, 51.82%, 57.46%, 53.20% of the operating revenue respectively. The sweeping robots were the main products, accounting for 87.54%, 91.10%, 91.91%, 92.56% of the service robot business revenue.