DJI Accuses Insta360 of Stealing Employee Inventions in Patent Lawsuit
Three days before DJI plans to launch its own 360-degree drone, the company filed a patent ownership lawsuit against its chief competitor in Chinese court.
image from GPT Image 1.5
Three days before DJI plans to launch its own 360-degree drone, the company filed a patent ownership lawsuit against its chief competitor in Chinese court. Insta360 founder JK Liu responded the same day — and the reply is a document worth reading in full.
DJI filed suit in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court on March 23, alleging that six Insta360 patents should legally belong to DJI under China's "service invention" doctrine, which assigns IP rights to an employer when an employee develops related technology within one year of leaving. As the South China Morning Post reported, the dispute covers flight control systems, structural design, and image processing — core drone technologies. The court accepted the case. DJI did not respond to a request for comment.
The filing landed three days before DJI's Avata 360 is scheduled to hit the market on March 26, directly competing with Insta360's Antigravity A1 drone, which sold CNY30 million (about $4.3 million) in its first 48 hours on the Chinese market last December. Arashi Vision, Insta360's parent company, closed down 7 percent on Monday at CNY181.15, underperforming a Shanghai market that fell 3.6 percent, according to Yicai Global.
Liu fired back in a detailed statement posted to Weibo the same day, with Insta360 providing an English translation to PetaPixel. The rebuttal covers ground most patent disputes never reach.
On the "anonymous inventors" claim: Liu says withholding inventor names in early Chinese domestic filings is standard Insta360 practice — used across all filings, not just those involving ex-DJI personnel — to protect employees from corporate recruiters. Names appear in international PCT filings where full disclosure is required. "If our motive were as DJI claims," Liu writes, "we wouldn't have used these names at all."
On the substance of the patents: Liu says the most relevant drone flight control patent covers a single feature — a one-button "building dive" shot for FPV flight — and that the idea was his own. "I was deeply involved in refining and approving it," he writes. The feature was never implemented; current flight restrictions make it impractical anyway. His position: "If DJI wanted this patent, they could've just asked for it."
And then Liu gets to the number that frames his entire response: 28. According to Liu, his team identified 28 Insta360 patents covering DJI products — 11 hardware and structural, 8 software-method, 6 control-method, and 3 accessory. Insta360 did not sue on any of them. According to DroneXL, Liu's stated explanation for the restraint is: "As a smaller company with limited resources, we prioritize innovation over litigation." The company recorded its fastest growth and highest revenue in Q4 2025.
That restraint, according to Liu, has a stated limit. Liu draws an explicit line in his statement: Insta360 will only go "nuclear" with its patent portfolio if its ability to make drones is directly threatened. The Avata 360 launches Thursday. The implication is not subtle.
The lawsuit is also the latest chapter in a broader competitive realignment between the two companies. DJI entered Insta360's core 360-degree camera territory last year with the Osmo 360. Insta360 moved into DJI's drone market through Antigravity. Both are now competing directly in both categories — action cameras and consumer drones — at the same moment DJI is using the courts to contest Insta360's intellectual property.
Liu draws a parallel to a recent precedent: on February 26, the U.S. International Trade Commission issued a final determination clearing Insta360 across five utility patents GoPro had asserted. Liu says he spent roughly $10 million defending that case. "We understand why GoPro and DJI sued us — established players hate losing market share," Liu writes. "We will not use weapons unless absolutely necessary."
What to watch: the Shenzhen court will now move into evidence collection and formal investigation — a process that in Chinese IP litigation can stretch months or years. Insta360 says it will wait for that process. In the meantime, seven or eight new products are coming this year, including another drone, according to Liu. The Avata 360 launches Thursday. The lawsuit, whatever its merits, is not slowing anyone down.
