The smartphone market is back in flames. On December 12, Xiaomi's spokesperson official Weibo issued a statement saying that Xiaomi's "keel hinge" and Huawei's "double spin water drop hinge" are not similar in terms of technical characteristics.
The cause of the incident originated from the speech of Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei and CEO of Device BG, at the 2023 Pollen Annual Meeting. He said that his friends did not respect Huawei's intellectual property rights when they plagiarized. At the same time, for example, some friends will directly turn the double-spin water drop hinge into a keel hinge, but in fact the keel does not exist.
Although Yu Chengdong did not clearly point out that the friend is Xiaomi, the keel hinge mentioned by Yu Chengdong has the same name as the keel hinge technology configured with Xiaomi's folding screen mobile phone mixfold3. Therefore, Xiaomi believes that Yu Chengdong is accusing Xiaomi of plagiarizing Huawei's double-spin waterdrop hinge technology.
For a long time, creases, weight, and ** are the key factors restricting the development of folding screens. Whether it is Huawei, Xiaomi, or Samsung, OPPO, they are constantly innovating around hinge technology. So, is Huawei's dual-spin waterdrop hinge consistent with Xiaomi's keel hinge technology?
Xiaomi said in the statement that the two are completely different in terms of design ideas and mechanical mechanisms. According to the patent drawing provided by Xiaomi, Xiaomi's "keel hinge" adopts the design of "** rod group, 5 components and 7 low subs";Huawei's "double spin droplet hinge" adopts a design scheme of "two-stage rod group, 3 components and 4 low spokes".
It is worth mentioning that the patent map published by Xiaomi also shows that the "keel hinge" patent is a utility model and not an invention patent, while Huawei is an invention patent. In this regard, Xiaomi told the author that Xiaomi applied for a utility model patent and an invention patent at the same time, but the approval time for invention patents was long, so the utility model patents were approved first.
Regarding the beginning and end of the incident and technical details, Huawei has not responded as of press time.
It should not be ignored that this is not the first time that Huawei and Xiaomi have "gone to war" over patent issues.
As early as the beginning of this year, Huawei sued Xiaomi for infringement of four patents, involving 4G LTE technology, mobile phone photography and unlocking technology. Since then, Xiaomi has successively filed requests for invalidation of Huawei-related patents with the State Intellectual Property Office for four patents. However, the State Intellectual Property Office said that it would "maintain the validity of the patent right" and that Xiaomi would still have to pay patent fees to Huawei in the future.
In September, Huawei and Xiaomi announced a global patent cross-licensing agreement that covers communications technologies, including 5G. At that time, the market generally believed that the signing of a global patent cross-licensing agreement between the two parties may mean that Huawei and Xiaomi have reached a settlement.
In fact, questions about patents are constantly being heard in the smartphone industry. At the end of 2022, Wang Xiang, then partner and president of Xiaomi Group, said that a smartphone may require more than 200,000 different technologies and patents, and no company or even a country can make a smartphone independently and without relying on other people's technology. Because of the complexity of the technology, any company will face intellectual property challenges.
At present, in many technical fields, the development of business and technology will be accompanied by various litigation lawsuits of intellectual property. In addition to self-development, acquisition, patent cross-licensing and patent transfer are also important ways for enterprises to accumulate patent achievements. Regarding whether Xiaomi's "keel hinge" is plagiarized, the author will continue to pay attention.