Rival accused of patent infringement by Chinese drone company

Rival accused of patent infringement by Chinese drone company

DJI has filed a lawsuit against the parent company of Insta360, Arashi Vision, at the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong Province, citing disputes over six patents covering drone flight control, structural design and image processing. Accepted on March 23, 2026, the case sent Insta360’s shares down more than 4.5 per cent in early trading and marks DJI’s first domestic patent-ownership lawsuit. Having competed for year, the rivalry between DJI and Insta360 intensified in 2025. With Osmo 360 camera, DJI moved into Insta360’s domain while through Antigravity, its drone sub-brand, Insta360 entered DJI’s territory. The two now compete directly in the action camera market.

As per Chinese media report filings, DJI says the patents were developed by several former DJI engineers within one year of leaving the company. DJI maintains that the inventions are directly linked to the employees’ original responsibilities and qualify as “service inventions” under Chinese law, meaning that the patent rights would belong to DJI. Key technologies in drone flight control, aircraft structure and imaging systems are covered by the patents. Differences are also shown by public records between inventor disclosures in China and abroad. Insta360 requested that inventors’ names not be published in Chinese filings in at least two drone related patents. However, corresponding international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications fully revealed these inventors, confirming that they were former DJI research and development personnel who had worked on core DJI drone projects. Such differences have become part of DJI’s evidence regarding the origin of the disputed inventions.

A market reaction was triggered by the news of the lawsuit. Shares of Insta360’s Shanghai listed parent company fell 6.98 percent on the day the case became public, reflecting investor uncertainty over potential legal exposure and the company’s product pipeline. Insta360 founder and CEO Jingkang Liu in response posted a public statement rejecting DJI’s accusations. The company conducted an internal review of patents filed by employees who previously worked at DJI and found that ideas originated independently within Insta360; Liu said. The company routinely withholds inventor names in domestic filings to reduce headhunting risks; he said and added that some listed inventions such as a flight control feature enabling a one button “building dive” – were conceptual and not deployed in products. “This was my idea, and I was deeply involved in refining and approving it. Under current flight restrictions, this patent isn’t very useful, so the feature wasn’t implemented. If DJI wanted this patent, they could’ve just asked me for it,” Liu reportedly said. Suggestions of deliberate concealment were also dismissed by Liu, saying that several patents unrelated to former DJI employees were similarly filed with non disclosed inventors. The patented technologies were developed during the employees’ tenure at the company and were not derived from prior work at DJI; Insta360 maintains. The patents are not core to operations and do not pose an immediate risk to production; Insta360 also said. “However, when we are sued, we should spend money. In order to protect our legitimate rights and interests, we spent more than 1000 million US dollars to win the GoPro case overseas. This time we have the same mentality,” Liu reportedly said.