Nikon has lost the patent lawsuit against Viltrox in China. Nikon’s Chinese Z-mount patent (202010127062.4) was declared fully invalid by CNIPA (see previous coverage of the Nikon vs. Viltrox lawsuit). The full court ruling can be found here. The documents are in Chinese – here is the AI recap:

Case Overview

• Patent in Question: Chinese Invention Patent No. 202010127062.4, titled “Accessory” (配件).
• Patentee: Nikon Corporation (株式会社尼康).
• Patent Type: This is a divisional application with a parent application (201811247662.3), both filed on October 25, 2018, with a priority date of October 26, 2017.
• Invalidation Petitioner: Shenzhen Jueying Technology Co., Ltd. (深圳市爵影科技有限公司).
• Outcome: The CNIPA declared the patent entirely invalid in its decision (Decision No. 661357) dated July 13, 2026.

Chronological Summary of Events

1. Initial Challenge (December 2025): The petitioner filed a request for invalidation on December 16, 2025, arguing that claims 1-11 were unclear and not supported by the description (Article 26.4 of the Patent Law).
2. Supplemental Arguments (December 2025 & January 2026): The petitioner supplemented their arguments, adding reasons related to lack of novelty and inventive step, lack of priority entitlement, and added subject matter. They submitted several pieces of prior art (US2016/0041453A1, CN103620496A, JP2000047308A) as evidence.
3. Patentee’s Amendment (February 2026): Nikon modified the claims. They merged features from original dependent claims 4 and 7 into independent claims 1 and 2. The final claim set was reduced from 11 to 10 claims.
4. Oral Hearing (May 15, 2026): An oral hearing was held. Key clarifications were made:
   • The petitioner withdrew their arguments regarding the right of priority.
   • The panel confirmed the amended claims (1-10) as the basis for the decision.
   • Both parties agreed on the authenticity of the prior art documents submitted.
5. Final Decision (July 13, 2026): The panel issued its decision to declare the patent invalid based on a lack of inventive step (Article 22.3 of the Patent Law).

Key Arguments and Reasoning

The main independent claims (1 and 2) define a lens accessory with four protrusions (第1-第4配件侧突出部) that engage with corresponding protrusions on a camera body’s mount. Key features added by the amendment include:

• Specifying that the length of the 2nd protrusion is shorter than the distance between the two closest protrusions on the camera body.
• Specifying that the center angle of the 2nd protrusion is smaller than the center angles of the 1st, 3rd, and 4th protrusions.

The Petitioner’s Argument (Lack of Inventive Step)

The petitioner argued that the claims were obvious in light of the prior art. The primary evidence used was:

• Evidence 2 (CN103620496A): A camera body, lens barrel, and interchangeable lens system.
  • The panel found this document disclosed nearly all features of the “accessory,” including the lens mount, terminal groups, a cylindrical portion, and multiple protrusions.
  • The key differences were that the patent used four protrusions in a specific arrangement, while Evidence 2’s main embodiment used three.

The Panel’s Decision & Reasoning

The panel ruled that the claimed invention was obvious for the following reasons:

• Number of Protrusions: Although Evidence 2 shows 3 protrusions, its description explicitly states that the number of protrusions can be “any number” (including four), providing a direct motivation to increase them.
• Arrangement: Evidence 1 (US2016/0041453A1) and Evidence 3 (JP2000047308A) disclose interchangeable lenses with four or more protrusions arranged around the mount, providing a clear technical teaching for the claimed layout.
• Preventing Mis-Insertion: The panel reasoned that even in Evidence 2, the different sizes of the protrusions inherently prevent incorrect insertion, making the patent’s solution a conventional design choice.
• “Second Center Angle” Feature: The panel found the relationship between the center angles of the protrusions to be a routine design choice (a “limited experiment”) for a person skilled in the art, and the resulting effects (shock resistance, load-bearing) were predictable.
• Terminal Protection: The arrangement of the protrusions relative to the terminal group was also deemed a predictable and conventional design to prevent damage.

The panel concluded that the modifications from three to four protrusions and their specific angular relationships were “obvious” (显而易见) and did not involve an inventive step. Therefore, all 10 amended claims were invalidated.

Final Verdict

The CNIPA invalidated all claims of Nikon’s patent (202010127062.4). The decision states that Nikon can appeal to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court within three months.

 

Via NikonRumors

The post Nikon lost the patent lawsuit against Viltrox in China appeared first on Photo Rumors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Meta has filed a patent for a system that records your voice and surroundings all day, then uses an AI to analyse your mood. The patent's stated, theoretical goal is for Meta, a company that makes billions of dollars targeting ads at its users based on their data, is to sell users a wearable that tailors workouts for them based on whether they're happy or sad. Patentlyze first noticed the patent which was published on July 2 after Meta filed it back in December of 2025. The filing described an "apparatus" that surveilled a user and their surroundings constantly to craft a better workout. "The audible communications may be associated with contextual factors such as time of day, location, user activity, or digital interaction," the patent said. "The audible communications may be transcribed, and an emotional-state machine learning model may interpret verbal and nonverbal cues to determine emotional indicators." According to the filing, Meta needs to know when a user laughs or sighs, where they are physically, and what objects they're surrounded by. It would even like to know when you've taken your meds. "The AI assistant may listen to a user(s) at predefined times to hear various types of communication, such as sighs, laughter, and/or the tone(s) of a voice(s)," the patent said. "The AI assistant may use these inputs to quantify the user's emotional state or generate other insights about the user [...] in another example, the AI assistant may take multiple inputs in in addition to audio inputs (e.g., of a user's voice) to provide a summary of emotional trends based on various inputs (e.g., a happier emotional state associated with a particular time of day or at a time when medication is taken, etc.)." The more data it has, the patent explains, the better it could understand a user's moods. "The system increases the precision and reliability of emotional inference by aligning multimodal sensor inputs on synchronized timelines, which creates a novel data structure that supports richer emotional analysis," it said. "These combined features deliver a technical improvement in automated audio interpretation, enabling continuous emotional monitoring on everyday devices." The emotional-analyzing AI would need far more than just a user's words to determine moods over time. A longer description of the hypothetical training data for the AI included "attributes of thousands of objects" such as a user's books, personal messages, and newspapers. "In some examples, audible communications may include speech (e.g., voice data), sighs, laughter, or other nonverbal sounds associated with an expression(s), an emotion(s), or ideas. In some examples, the audible communications may include the tone(s) of a voice of a user while making the communication(s)," it said. All this data, Meta says, would be in service of tailoring better workouts. Humans, the patent explained, are simply not as good as a machine for this. "Personal trainers cannot provide the level of precision in guidance, such as correcting a pose and/or body movement," it said. "These challenges create a need for a practical approach that uses a single device to observe movement, recommend routines, and provide corrective guidance." "Like other companies, patents at Meta are often filed to disclose concepts that may or may not be implemented, and a granted patent does not guarantee that Meta has pursued or will pursue the technology described," the company said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.