Xiaomi has released a statement in the wake of the Gree Electric patent infringement lawsuit against the company. Xiaomi responded via its official Weibo page, saying it has not received any environmental appliance-related lawsuits. The company didn’t provide any further statement.

It was previously reported that Gree Electric Appliances Co. Ltd instituted a lawsuit and had gotten judgment in its favor against Xiaomi for infringement on the Xiaomi MIJIA electric fan (reportedly the MIJIA DC Inverter Tower Fan). The judgment sum against Xiaomi was specified as 1.85 million yuan ($254,000). However, the court documents indicated that the defendants were Dongguan Jingdong Lisheng Trading Co. Ltd and Zhejiang Xingyue Electric Co. Ltd.

Gree Electric in its earlier statement, noted that it had received the Supreme People’s Court Intellectual Property Civil Final No. 1123 legal document (2023) issued by the Supreme People’s Court on June 18, 2024. The fallout of the judgment, according to Gree Electric, was that The Xiaomi MIJIA electric fan mentioned in the infringement shall no longer be manufactured and sold. The company, based on the reported judgment, warned all infringing entities to immediately stop producing and selling the infringing products. It concluded that it would take legal measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

It is therefore unclear under what basis is Xiaomi rebutting the Gree Electric claims. The full optics of the verdict will become clear in the coming days. It could be that Xiaomi bought the infringed component from a third party and so, may not be directly liable to the stated judgment.

(via)

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Xiaomi has lost a lawsuit instituted against it by Gree Electric bordering on patent infringement on the Xiaomi MIJIA electric fan. The lawsuit was instituted in 2021 and marked a dent in the relationship between the two companies.

Gree Electric, via its official Weibo account, stated that the lawsuit was in response to the case of the MIJIA electric fan BPTS01DM infringed on Gree’s patent rights. The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court ruled that Xiaomi’s actions constituted infringement and ordered that Gree should be compensated for its economic losses. The compensation sum was 1.85 million yuan ($254,260). According to the ruling, Xiaomi is to stop any further production and sale of the MIJIA electric fan.

Gree Electric has warned that all infringing entities related to the judgment must abide by the terms of the judgment. It says any departure from the terms and continued selling of the Xiaomi MIJIA electric fan will be met by legal action. It says it has put all measures in place to safeguard the company’s legitimate rights and interests. The actual product was discovered to the the Xiaomi MIJIA DC Inverter Tower Fan. The model is a floor-standing tower fan. It is however unclear what components of the Inverter Tower fan infringed on Gree Electric’s fan. Xiaomi has yet to issue an official statement on the court judgment.

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Xiaomi CEO, Lei Jun seems to have lost a bet with Gree Electric Appliances Inc. Chairwoman, Dong Mingzhu. This comes after Gree reported 2018’s total revenue at 198 billion yuan yesterday. The bet, made by Lei Jun on national television, back in December 2013, said that Xiaomi’s revenues would surpass Gree in the next five years. However, Xiaomi’s revenue for the same period was just 174.915 billion yuan, a good 20 billion yuan less than Gree’s figure.

While we still don’t know whether Lei Jun would keep his side of the bet, if he decides to do so, it would cost him 1 billion yuan, and that’s nearly $150 million. At the time of making this bet, it was like David challenging Goliath, with Gree beating Xiaomi in every single department, right from revenue, factories, to even employees. But Lei Jun was betting on the company’s solid online sales model, which has helped the company become one of the top smartphone companies in the world.

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It’s worth mentioning that Lei Jun’s initial bet was for just 1 yuan. However, Gree’s Chairwoman, Dong Mingzhu, raised that bet to 1 billion yuan.

Xiaomi or Lei Jun is yet to comment on this matter.

(Source)

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Gree Electric is a well known appliance manufacturer in China. The company specializes in the manufacturing of Air Conditioners and is currently the world’s largest residential Air Conditioner manufacturer.

A few months back, Dong Mingzhu, the president of Gree electric had said that the company may release a smartphone in the market. And today, we have a glimpse of what could be the first Gree smartphone.

While the leak says nothing about the technical specs running on the new Gree smartphone, it does reveal the overall design of the phone. First of all, we can see that the phone is built from metal, most probably aluminum.

The back features a smooth metal finish with the camera sensor and LED flash on top and the GREE logo engraved near the bottom. The overall size of the phone hints that the display could be more than 5.5-inches diagonally. Up front, the bezels look big and there’s lot of space, both on top as well as the bottom of the display. Finally, on the right, you can see the round power button and the volume up and down keys.

To be honest, this design not even near to the refined flagship phones that we have seen recently like the Mate 7 or even the ZTE Nubia Z9 Max. Still, it could just be a prototype and the company may change a lot of things before finally launching it in the market.

This particular leak further confirms one more electronic company’s entry into the smartphone race. Clearly, they feel that there’s still room for new players in this already crowded Chinese smartphone market.

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