Business dispute goes to court: DJI sues Insta360

Question: How does employee turnover trigger patent battles in the drone industry?

Text | Gu Lingyu

Editor | Liu Peng

On March 23, according to JiJian News, DJI officially filed a lawsuit in the Intermediate People’s Court of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, against YingShi Innovation (688775.SH), involving six patent ownership disputes. DJI claims that the relevant patents are inventions made within one year after the employee left, closely related to their work tasks during their time at DJI. The court has officially accepted the case.

JiJian News reports that DJI accuses YingShi Innovation of applying for patents mainly focused on key technologies such as drone flight control, structural design, and image processing.

Citing informed sources, it is said that in two patents related to drone flight control and structural design, YingShi Innovation listed some inventors as “requesting non-disclosure of names” in the Chinese application documents. However, in the corresponding international patent applications, all inventors’ real names are listed. The individuals whose names are not disclosed are former core R&D personnel of DJI, who deeply participated in key drone projects during their employment and mastered the core technical systems.

As of this report, YingShi Innovation has not responded to the matter. Additionally, YingShi Innovation has not made any public disclosures. Its current stock price is 185.43 yuan, down 4.75% today.

In the past six months, the “business war” between DJI and YingShi has been one of the most watched topics in China’s hardware industry. YingShi started with panoramic cameras and announced in July 2025 that it would enter the consumer drone market, launching the YingLing series. Three days later, DJI released a new panoramic camera, and their businesses began to intersect directly.

Subsequently, YingShi publicly accused DJI of pressuring shared suppliers to choose “one of the two,” which hindered the production of YingLing drones, leading some partners to terminate their contracts. DJI has not publicly responded to these allegations.

Ma Bojing, a legal advisor at Beijing Qinglv Law Firm with extensive experience in patents, told Tencent News “Yixian” that based on available information, DJI’s lawsuit is due to the discovery that core R&D personnel who left joined YingShi Innovation, and their names appeared as inventors in the published PCT international patent application.

Under these circumstances, according to Article 6 of the Patent Law and Article 13 of the Patent Law Implementation Regulations, the content disclosed in the patent document constitutes technical evidence. The application date (including whether the priority date is counted from the priority date, depending on the priority document) is within one year of the departure of the core R&D personnel mentioned above.

She explained that, based on classic past cases, the Supreme Court mainly considers the following factors when determining whether an invention is a “service invention”:

1. The specific duties or tasks assigned to the employee at the original company, including job responsibilities, authority, and access to, control over, or acquisition of technical information related to the patent.

2. The specific details of the patent involved, including its technical field, the technical problem it addresses, the purpose and technical effects of the invention, and the scope of protection defined by the claims.

3. Whether the original company engaged in R&D activities related to the patent or had legitimate sources for the relevant technology.

4. Whether the rights holder or inventor can reasonably explain the R&D process or the source of the technology involved, considering factors such as the complexity of the technical solution, R&D investment required, and whether they possess the relevant knowledge, experience, skills, or material conditions, as well as evidence of R&D activities.

She noted that both parties are well-known enterprises with highly overlapping product technology fields. Since the case involves frontier patents and the definition of service achievements, the outcome will depend on the evidence both sides present regarding the R&D process, and there are many variables.