Drone Wars: DJI just filed a lawsuit against Yuneec for patent infringement

By Albert Khoury Published April 2, 2016

Leading unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Chinese manufacturer DJI is headed to the United States District Court for the Central District of California to seek damages from one of its largest competitors. According to a press release, DJI filed a patent infringement lawsuit against both Yuneec International Co. Ltd. and Yuneec USA, Inc. .

“The complaint asserts that Yuneec’s products and technology infringe two DJI patents and seeks injunctive relief to halt the further sale of the infringing Yuneec products and systems,” reads the statement.

Recommended Videos

The complaint specifically cites patent numbers 9,164,506, titled “Systems and methods for target tracking” and 9,280,038, titled “Interchangeable Mounting Platform.” The company reiterates its expenditure of time and resources over the years to develop its products. It calls its describes its technology as “fundamental to the future of UAV and related industrial applications.”

DJI concedes that it welcomes the competition, but also must protect its intellectual property. The filing is intended to extend that protection to its customers and partners as well as to promote innovation all around.

Digital Trends recently reviewed the Phantom 4 drone, and we were impressed with its accident avoidance, maneuverability, and quality of video capture. Though Yuneec did have sense and avoid tech available for demonstration at CES with its Typhoon H, DJI was the first to put a functioning unit into production. Yuneec partnered with investor Intel to utilize its RealSense technology for its crash-avoidance features. There has been no news of a release date for the Typhoon H.

DJI holds hundreds of patents worldwide, including at over 30 in the U.S., with another 50 pending. The drone manufacturer is represented by the Silicon Valley law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Former Weekend Editor

Al started his career at a downtown Manhattan publisher, and has since worked with digital and print publications. He's…

Topics

Emerging Tech

OpenAI admits it needs to rethink what happens when AI goes rogue

As increasingly capable AI agents move beyond controlled tests, OpenAI is confronting a difficult question: When does strange model behavior become an incident the public deserves to know about?

OpenAI has spent plenty of time explaining how it plans to stop increasingly capable AI agents from doing things they shouldn't. Now, the company says it needs to get better at telling everyone when those things have already happened. The admission follows reports of another previously undisclosed incident involving OpenAI's AI agents, this time affecting a German-language programming wiki. According to Reuters, agents made more than 15,000 unauthorized edits to DseWiki, using the site to communicate and share ways to bypass restrictions, cheat on tasks, and avoid detection.

OpenAI has now acknowledged what it calls the "wiki incident" and says the episode exposed a larger problem with how AI companies disclose unexpected model behavior. The company says it is developing a framework for deciding when and how to make incidents involving misaligned AI public.

Emerging Tech

AI has a safety problem nobody is ready for

AI safety efforts are ramping up, but their protections don’t work equally well everywhere. In developing countries, language gaps and cultural blind spots can turn everyday AI mistakes into serious real-world consequences.

AI companies are spending an enormous amount of time worrying about what happens when their models become too capable. OpenAI even took the unusual step of temporarily pausing training on a model last month over safety concerns, as the industry grapples with risks ranging from autonomous behavior to increasingly sophisticated cyber capabilities.

But there’s another AI safety problem that is much easier to overlook: the protections already being built into these systems don’t necessarily work equally well for everyone. A new report from Rest of World highlights how AI safety efforts remain heavily centered around the needs of wealthier, English-speaking countries. That can leave people in parts of Asia, Africa, and other developing regions dealing with problems as basic and potentially dangerous as a chatbot misunderstanding their language.

Branded Content

The IFA 2026 Publisher Award Winners Bring Fresh Ideas to Everyday Tech

From Smarter Entry to Screen-Free Wellness, These IFA 2026 Winners Do Things Differently

IFA 2026 Publisher Awards

IFA is the kind of event where almost every corner promises the next big thing in tech. Some ideas are ambitious, others are surprisingly simple, and a few make you wonder why nobody thought of them sooner. But among hundreds of new products, the most memorable ones usually have something more going for them than novelty alone.

This year’s IFA Publisher Award winners are a good example. They span everything from smart entry and personal wellness to coffee, floor care, and big-screen entertainment. What connects them is how they take technology in interesting new directions while keeping its purpose grounded in how people actually use it.