Dual card dual standby has a long history. Is Apple's dual card dual standby iPhone patent infringement?

In the early morning of September 13, Beijing time, Apple exhibited a dual-card dual-standby iPhone customized for the Chinese market at the new product launch conference. The dual-card dual-standby function is a special demand of the Chinese market. It has appeared in the Chinese market for a long time. Related Chinese companies have also applied for a large number of patents. Can Apple, with strong patent awareness, avoid the patents of relevant Chinese companies?

For Chinese users, the biggest highlight of this Apple conference is that Apple has customized a dual-card dual-standby iPhone for the Chinese market. In China, the mobile phone number is bound to the operator, and users cannot carry the number to change the network. If they want to change an operator, they can only apply for another phone card. Nowadays, all aspects of life are bound to the mobile phone number. The old number must be used for a period of time, and the dual card and dual standby function has become an urgent demand of Chinese consumers. Before the emergence of dual-card dual-standby mobile phones, if consumers want to use two phone cards at the same time, they can only hold two mobile phones, which is inconvenient to carry and use. In response to this special situation, most of the mobile phone manufacturers in China have introduced dual-card dual-standby mobile phones. In Europe, the United States and Japan, consumers can switch networks with their numbers, so there is no need for dual cards and dual standby. Therefore, Apple has not set up the dual card and dual standby function. Chinese consumers who want to use Apple and use two numbers can only buy one more mobile phone. However, there are many inconveniences in using two mobile phones, which objectively affects Apple's sales in China..

Has Apple, which has not launched dual-card dual-standby phones before, made any layout in this regard? In fact, Apple applied for a patent for the related dual-card dual-standby function as early as 2016. The application numbers are CN105939535 and CN105873195, respectively, and the topics are dual SIM selection technology and power consumption reduction technology for dual SIM devices. This time Apple launched a dual-card dual-standby iPhone as a boost to the Chinese market.

The dual-card dual-standby function was first introduced by Chinese companies. After all, this is a special demand of the Chinese market, and related Chinese companies have also applied for a large number of patents. And there have been several patent lawsuits around the dual-card dual-standby function, the most recent of which was a patent lawsuit initiated by Coolpad against Xiaomi. Having relevant patents does not mean that there will be no infringement. Although Apple's dual-card dual-standby patent application is relatively late and the scope of claims is narrow, it cannot be easily concluded whether it infringes the patents of relevant Chinese companies. Need and related enterprises in the past to apply for a detailed comparison of the patent.

The earliest dual-card mobile phone dates back to 1994The patent applied by Nokia in, the patent name is radio device, which discloses the dual card concept of wireless telephone. In 1997, Motorola also applied for the corresponding dual-card mobile phone patent, named as multi-smart card phone and method.

A large number of dual-SIM mobile phone patents in China have been filed after 2000, especially by relevant individuals from Taiwan,The dual-card mobile phones applied during this period cannot be switched freely, let alone online at the same time, that is, two smart cards are simply inserted into the mobile phone, mainly relying on manual network switching.

Huali Group applied for a patent for CDMA/GSM dual-mode mobile communication method and communication equipment in 2002. Later Huali used the patent to sue Samsung and claim 50 million yuan. However, since the patent claim only involved dual-mode switching, it did not propose that dual cards be online at the same time. Huali lost the lawsuit in the second instance and Samsung's infringement was not established. In March 2018, Huali gave up the patent.

In 2005, Coolpad proposed to realize the dual-card dual-standby function of two phone cards online at the same time, and applied for a utility model patent named a dual-mode mobile terminal, but the utility model has expired. In 2006, Coolpad applied for a patent named mobile communication terminal collaboration method and its interface system, and used the patent to sue Xiaomi. Subsequently, Coolpad applied for dozens of patents in dual-card dual-standby, mainly involving related details such as batteries and antennas for dual-card dual-standby mobile phones.

In summary, European and American companies first applied for patents for dual-card functions, but these patents are not comprehensive enough to cover all the functions of dual-card dual-standby in the later period. Subsequently, Chinese enterprises applied for a large number of dual card dual standby related patents. However, whether the dual-card dual-standby patent applied by Chinese enterprises can cover Apple's dual-card dual-standby products requires more product details.

From the development of the dual card dual standby function, it can be seen that the layout of a patent is almost impossible to achieve full coverage of related technical fields. With the progress of technology and the growth of demand, technicians can always find new technical breakthroughs and create new growth points. Therefore, in-depth study of the patent layout of competitors can find a new direction for the enterprise's own patent layout.