Apple iPhone Is Targeted in Beijing Patent Case

HONG KONG — In China, cheap smartphones made by relatively obscure companies aping branded designs are ubiquitous.

Usually it is the major brands that go after the smaller companies for patent infringement. But one of China’s low-cost phone makers recently filed a patent complaint against Apple in the city of Beijing — and for now, it has won.

With an appeals process ahead, the ruling is unlikely to have a major impact on Apple. Still, the action spotlights the growing number of cases of municipal patent offices in China backing local companies against larger, international brands.

According to a statement from the Beijing Intellectual Property Office, Apple infringed on a design patent used in a phone called the 100C, made by the Chinese phone maker Baili. The statement ordered Apple to stop selling certain older versions of the iPhone within Beijing, though an appeal of such a ruling to the courts in China usually forestalls any sales injunctions.

Apple said it had appealed, and a sales clerk at the Apple Store in the Sanlitun area of Beijing said on Friday evening that the store had received no instructions to stop selling the iPhone models and that “it is business as usual.” At the store, a handful of iPhone 6 models stood mostly unused as shoppers tapped on the newer 6s models at a nearly table.

“IPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, as well as iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone SE models, are all available for sale today in China,” Apple said in a statement. “We appealed an administrative order from a regional patent tribunal in Beijing last month, and as a result the order has been stayed pending review by the Beijing I.P. Court.”

The new headache for Apple comes after increased regulatory pressure and problems in China. Recently, a Chinese company won the right to sell leather goods under the iPhone trademark after years of legal back and forth. And Apple’s movie and book services were shut down in the country shortly after they were introduced, a sign of more serious scrutiny from China’s media regulator.

The Baili patent case pales in comparison to those troubles, though it underscores the day-to-day annoyances that can come with running a tech business in China.

The country has had its fair share of cases in which low-level manufacturers take on global brands. In perhaps the most famous, Apple paid $60 million to use the iPad trademark.

Patent issues like the one Apple has with Baili are common enough that a recent paper in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law examined the topic. While the paper found that China’s patent system was not structured to benefit Chinese companies, it said there had been a number of recent “high-profile patent suits filed by relatively unknown Chinese firms against high-profile foreign tech companies like Apple, Samsung and Dell.”

Once a local intellectual property office in China finds an issue of infringement, companies can decide whether to appeal the matter. At that point, the issue typically is litigated or resolved via a settlement of some kind.