Estonian Cleveron defeated the case in a Chinese court about a stolen patent

Cleveron, the Estonian developer of parcel terminals and driverless robots, has won a trial against the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and invalidated a Chinese patent on its identical parcel terminal Cleveron 401. 

In 2015 at the Paris Post Expo Cleveron presented its parcel terminal. Later a Chinese company Hangzhou Dongcheng Electronic Co., Ltd (HDE) showed an interest in the invention and started to run negotiations with Cleveron about future cooperation, but the deal failed.

In 2017, Cleveron AS discovered that Chinese HDE had registered identically to Cleveron 401 robotic parcel terminal. 

In 2018, Cleveron filed an application for invalidation of the patent with the China National Intellectual Property Administration. It was denied, and Cleveron started the case in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.  In the second half of 2022, the Patent Reexamination Board satisfied Cleveron's application for invalidation of HDE's patent. The Court confirmed that Estonian Cleveron 401 existed before its Chinese HDE identical invention.

Estonian company claims, the Chinese patent could limit Cleveron's ability to sell patented products on the Chinese market and to order components from China and could confuse customers and partners regarding authorship in the future. Cleveron explains that HDE's invention was able to receive patent protection in China because in that country the utility model is also referred to as a patent, and the novelty of the invention is not assessed. So Chinese patent on an identical invention Cleveron 401 was legal in China.

Cleveron AS is a technology company focused on developing a driverless vehicle CLEVON 1 and parcel terminals Cleveron 401. The company was established in 2008 in Tallinn. Cleveron's solutions are used in 51 countries by Inditex/Zara, H&M, Falabella, UPS, and DHL.