PP GUN: When the maker dream hits the wall of a big company

PP GUN

January 6, 2016 was the opening of the CES exhibition, a bellwether of the technology industry. It was supposed to be a time for the participating teams to show off their skills and be in high spirits. However, Cao Siming, the founder and CEO of PP GUN, who was also attending the exhibition in Las Vegas, was indignant about one thing. He believed that the design of LeTV Super Gun King plagiarized PP GUN and infringed its patent rights. He hoped that LeTV Super Gun King would immediately stop promoting and selling it.

"I don't understand why a great company like LeTV would make a product that copies ours," he said a little depressed.

Regarding this matter, the reporter contacted Ren Guanjun, the general manager of marketing and communication of LeTV Zhixin. During the interview, Ren Guanjun was very tough, saying that LeTV did not think that (Super Gun King) was involved in infringement, and also revealed a signal to the reporter that LeTV would be on high alert!

LeTV Super Gun King

Like LeEco's non-core products, the Super Gun King is the result of cooperation between LeEco and others. The company that contributed the design of the Super Gun King to LeEco is a Shenzhen-based company called Huanchuang Technology. On the phone, Huanchuang Technology's spokesman Song Jiangping expressed disdain for the matter. He said that all the game guns designed by the company use its own patented technology.

"All the game guns designed by our company use our patented technology, which is completely different from PPGUN and all current domestic and foreign game guns that are designed based on gyroscopes, G-SENSORs and other components for motion sensing, " responded Song Jiangping.

So far, we have seen an ordinary patent case. Whether it is LeEco and its partners or PP GUN, the dialogue between plaintiffs and defendants in most patent infringement cases before going to court is probably like this. However, this is not an equal start.

After two years of persistence, we finally caught up with the good times

The opposite of LeEco and Huanchuang Technology's experienced response is Cao Siming, a maker with very amateur business management ability. It is not an exaggeration to describe him as a maker. A product has been developed from 2013 to now, which is too slow by the speed of Shenzhen. What is valuable is that what has changed over the years is the product experience, while what has not changed is Cao Siming's pursuit and persistence in the product.

In early 2013, Cao Siming brought the prototype of the pistol controller shown below to the domestic crowdfunding platform Roll Call Time, and received support from 4 people for a total of 260 yuan. There is no doubt that this crowdfunding ended in failure.

On April 17, 2014, Cao Siming returned again. What was different from the past was that he brought another form of game controller - PP GUN. He also launched a crowdfunding campaign at the roll call time, and finally saw the light of day, with nearly 110,000 crowdfunding support, and shipped to supporters in November of the same year. The good experience of the product made Cao Siming gain a group of die-hard fans and also won recognition in the industry.

While Cao Siming was working non-stop for PP GUN , the smart hardware entrepreneurship boom ushered in its heyday. On one side is Li Keqiang's "innovation by everyone" and "mass innovation", and on the other side is the undercurrent of capital. With these two strong winds, Cao Siming has become a representative of contemporary makers and a famous brand in Shenzhen. Indeed, this result is what Cao Siming longs for day and night. If you want to describe it in one sentence, the most appropriate one is probably what Wu Jun wrote in "The Top of the Wave": "For a young person who rides the tide, the best thing is to catch a big wave."

"Lucky" was intercepted by a big company

In June 2014, Cao Siming happily brought PP GUN to the CHINA JOY exhibition. At that time, Huanchuang Technology was next to the PP GUN booth. Coincidentally, this moment was photographed by Huanchuang Technology and posted on its official website as a promotional picture .

The man in black in the circle in the picture is Cao Siming himself

Cao Siming said that in June 2014, the gun-shaped peripherals designed by Huanchuang Technology were still very ordinary gun-shaped peripherals (see the picture below). But the design of the Super Gun King was completely changed. So he suspected that Huanchuang Technology discovered PP GUN at CHINA JOY in 2014 and began to plagiarize.

In this regard, Song Jiangping also admitted that "the booths of the two companies were next to each other at the exhibition" and he had seen PP GUN products. But as to whether he had studied PP GUN, he was very vague, "I don't know if our technology has studied their (PP GUN) products." As for the origin of the Super Gun King design, Song Jiangping went around in circles and replied like this:

"Based on our interactive technology, and then adapted to shooting games, the development for TV came about in this way."

In July 2015, LeTV held a grand press conference to launch the Super Gun King, whose appearance imitates the ACR assault rifle, a standard weapon in service of the US military. LeTV Super Gun King is very similar to PP GUN in terms of magazine-shaped batteries and simulated rear vibration modules. Even so, only the magazine mobile power bank can protect its own interests through legal channels.

In August 2014, Cao Siming obtained the design patent for "Mobile Power (Magazine)", with application number CN201430089441.4. The patent states that the design product can not only charge mobile electronic products, but also be used as a magazine for toy guns and electronic game guns. The function of LeTV Super Gun King's magazine is the same, which can power the somatosensory gun and serve as a mobile power source.

In addition, Cao Siming also pointed out the structural design of LeTV and the patent it obtained is consistent: the exposed positive and negative contacts of the magazine. From the figure below, we can see that the positive and negative contact designs of LeTV Super Gun King and PP GUN are basically the same.

"The reason for designing the positive and negative poles in this way is that the magazine is used as the battery of the gun," Cao Siming continued to explain. "The magazine-shaped battery that can be plugged in and out like a real gun magazine is our first in the world."

However, there is a possibility of something worse.

In response to PP GUN's claim that LeTV Super Gun King infringed upon its copyright, Song Jiangping responded in an email:

"The contact plate appearance of the magazine they pointed out to us infringes their patent. This was actually a common way of powering game guns in China and abroad before they applied for the patent. Our company will check the validity of their patents one by one and reserve the right to take further action in the future, including filing a request to invalidate their patent with the Patent Office."

In addition, some lawyers believe that it is unlikely that PP GUN will receive legal support. Lin Hua, legal director of Hujiang.com and a doctor of intellectual property, told reporters that design patents, like utility models, are different from invention patents in that they do not require substantive examination, so the authorization rate is very high and the possibility of being invalidated is also very high. The protection scope of design patents is based on the drawings, but not all drawings are protected, only special designs in the drawings that are different from existing designs. Taking the magazine as an example, only the part that is different from the ordinary magazine can be protected, and the universal design is not within the scope of protection.

"I see that there are exposed metal contacts in the magazine. Unless the plaintiff (PP GUN) proves that its design is special, the exposed contacts are a necessary functional requirement and are not protected," Lin Hua continued. "My evaluation of this case is impartial. I did not say that the plaintiff will lose the case, but that the plaintiff needs to provide more evidence."

The worse news is that some people pointed out that as early as 2012, a design like PP GUN was created by a foreign team...

All of the above information seems to indicate that PP GUN's patent is doomed to fail. However, it is only natural for Cao Siming, who owns the patent, to file a lawsuit to protect his rights. As for whether LeEco infringes on the patent, this will be decided by the court and no judgment will be made here.

But we see a portrait of a maker in Cao Siming. This portrait is more like a paradox. Cao Siming and LeEco, the latter must have more complete legal protection than the former. Does this mean that the former has no chance to develop independently? This is not just Cao Siming's confusion, he represents the majority of serious and down-to-earth entrepreneurs today. It is true that starting a business is difficult, and this difficulty may also include defending rights against large companies.

A maker who carefully submitted a patent application, hoping that the law would protect his creativity, finally caught up with the good times. But when he was thriving, he was intercepted by a huge company...

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