There’s been a lot of angst recently over America’s trade deficit with China, but it seems the United States has finally found something that it can successfully export to the People’s Republic: patent suits! Per the Dow Jones Newswire, a Chinese company called Shanghai Zhi Zhen Internet Technology has filed a patent suit against Apple claiming that it had originally patented the technology behind Siri all the way back in 2004. A company spokesman says that Zhi Zhen holds a patent for a digital personal assistant known as Xiao i Robot, a Mandarin-language automated voice system that’s “similar to Siri.” This all raises an obvious question, of course: How long until Steve Wozniak comes out and says that Xiao i Robot is superior to his former company’s voice-enabled software in every respect?
A Chinese company you’ve never heard of says it invented Siri first
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:29PM EST
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Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
