14 years of litigation, 28 days of breakthroughs: Apple contains a once-€1.2 billion Siri patent threat and advances its China AI rollout

Context: 

• Xiao-i, a Shanghai-based Chinese cognitive-AI company founded in 2001, first sued Apple in Shanghai over Siri in June 2012, beginning a dispute that has run for nearly 14 years¹.  The patent ZL200410053749.9 covers an early chatbot system that routes user requests among different servers—an early form of the conversational interaction now central to voice assistants and generative AI.  Apple brought three challenges seeking to invalidate all 11 claims and ultimately lost all three (March 31, 2026 Xiao-i’s press release).  The first went as far as a comparatively rare retrial before the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), which reinstated the original decision maintaining the patent in full².  Xiao-i’s first infringement action was dismissed without a ruling on the merits while the validity proceedings remained unresolved.  After the SPC restored the patent in 2020, Xiao-i filed a second infringement action, initially seeking RMB 10 billion (approximately €1.2 billion) in damages, and Apple brought its own declaratory non-infringement suit³.   Both ultimately came before the Shanghai High Court, which heard them together.
• Beyond the litigation overhang, Apple also faced regulatory hurdles in bringing Apple Intelligence to mainland China.  Its efforts to find a China-specific solution dated back to at least March 2024 (March 22, 2024 Reuters report).  Apple Intelligence nevertheless remained unavailable in mainland China, and Apple itself said that the timing of its rollout there depended on regulatory approval (February 22, 2025 Apple’s statement).