DJI Launches Patent Battle Against Insta360! Several Former R&D Employees Accused of Involvement

Source: Securities Times Network Author: Yu Shengliang

According to reports, DJI has officially filed a patent ownership dispute lawsuit against Yingstone Innovation at the Intermediate People’s Court of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, concerning six patents applied for by Yingstone. Several former DJI core R&D personnel are reportedly involved. A staff member from Yingstone Innovation’s securities department stated that they are currently assessing the impact of the lawsuit and whether it meets disclosure standards.

This is DJI’s first patent ownership dispute filed domestically, and the court has accepted and officially registered the case.

An insider close to the case revealed that DJI pointed out in the complaint that the patents involved were filed within a year after several employees who had left DJI departed. DJI believes these inventions are closely related to the work tasks these employees undertook while at DJI and fall under the category of employment inventions. According to relevant provisions of the Patent Law, the patent application rights should legally belong to DJI. The patents in question mainly focus on core technologies DJI has developed over many years, including drone flight control, structural design, and image processing.

Industry insiders further disclosed that DJI discovered this issue because two of the six disputed patents involve critical details: in the Chinese application documents, Yingstone listed some inventors as “requesting non-disclosure of names,” while in the corresponding international patent application (PCT), the actual names of the inventors were explicitly stated as required by law. Upon comparison, it was found that the inventors listed in both domestic and international applications are former DJI R&D personnel who left the company.

It is understood that these former employees participated deeply in the technical development of key drone projects during their tenure at DJI, directly handling core technologies such as flight control, structural design, and image processing.

Shortly after leaving DJI and joining Yingstone, these employees filed multiple patent applications in highly overlapping technical fields. According to publicly available information, as of now, Yingstone has 51 patent applications requesting non-disclosure of inventors’ names. These patents cover not only drone technology but also a wide range of products including handheld imaging devices.

According to the Implementation Rules of the Patent Law, inventions made within one year after leaving the company that are related to the original work tasks belong to employment inventions, and the patent application rights are owned by the original employer. This rule is designed to prevent core technical personnel from turning the R&D成果 of their former employer into personal benefits when changing jobs.

A staff member from Yingstone Innovation’s securities department stated that they are still confirming whether this constitutes a disclosure standard issue, depending on the impact of the lawsuit and whether it involves core patents. As of the time of reporting, Yingstone’s stock price has fallen by over 4%.