DJI sues Insta360 days before Avata 360 drone launch
Three days before DJI, the world's dominant drone maker, was set to launch its first 360-degree FPV drone, the company filed a patent lawsuit in Shenzhen that could determine who actually owns the technology powering its biggest rival's flagship product.
The lawsuit, filed against Arashi Vision — the Shenzhen-based parent company of camera and drone brand Insta360 — claims six core patents covering flight control systems, structural design, and image processing should legally belong to DJI. DroneDJ first reported the case on Monday. The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court has accepted it, meaning it passed an initial threshold review and will proceed to a full hearing. Jiemian News (界面新闻), the Chinese outlet that broke the original story, confirmed the court's acceptance and identified the basis of DJI's claim: China's "service inventions" doctrine.
Under Article 12 of China's Patent Law Implementing Regulations, inventions made within one year of an employee's departure that relate to their prior job duties automatically belong to their former employer. The law doesn't require proof of direct theft — just that the invention was substantially related to the work they performed. DJI is arguing that the engineers who developed these six patents were doing, in essence, DJI's work on Insta360's payroll.
The detail that makes this case damaging for Insta360 is buried in the patent paperwork itself. According to Yicai Global, a Chinese financial news outlet citing a person familiar with the matter, at least two of the disputed patents listed the inventor as "requesting anonymity" in domestic Chinese filings. In corresponding PCT international applications — where disclosure of inventor identity is mandatory under treaty — those names reportedly appeared, and, per the same sourcing, they match former core DJI R&D engineers with deep access to key drone projects. That link is reporting, not court record; it comes from a source close to the proceedings, not from any document Jiemian or Yicai has published directly. If the underlying PCT filings confirm it, the implication would be significant: someone filing these patents may have had reason to keep their identity off the domestic paperwork, and the international requirement removed that option.
Markets processed this quickly. Arashi Vision's shares dropped 7% on Monday to CNY 181.15 ($26.23), per Yicai. The broader Shanghai Composite also fell that day — SSE Composite data shows a decline of approximately 3.6% — meaning Arashi underperformed the index by more than three percentage points. For a company that went public just nine months ago at a 70 billion yuan (~$9.6 billion) valuation on China's STAR Market — opening day up 285% above its IPO price, with CEO Liu Jingkang ringing the bell while holding an Insta360 camera — the drop reflects real investor concern about what's at stake.
Liu Jingkang has since moved from that bell podium to a very different kind of public statement. According to the South China Morning Post, the CEO posted on Weibo that an internal review shows the patents are Insta360's own: "the available evidence indicates these are all ideas and innovations generated within Insta360." DJI, which did not respond to comment requests, is letting the court do its talking.
This is new territory even for DJI. TechNode confirmed that while DJI has fought patent battles abroad — infringement suits in US courts against drone rivals and at the US International Trade Commission — this is the first time the company has initiated a patent ownership dispute in China's domestic courts. That distinction matters. An ownership suit under the service inventions doctrine is a different legal theory than infringement. DJI isn't just arguing Insta360 is using its technology without a license. It's arguing Insta360 never owned the patents in the first place.
If DJI prevails, the six patents transfer to DJI outright. For context on what those patents cover: as DroneXL reported when the Antigravity A1 launched in December 2025, the A1 — a sub-250g, 8K/30fps FPV drone sold under Insta360's Antigravity brand — hit CNY 30 million in first-48-hour China sales, won TIME's Best Inventions 2025, and took a CES Innovation Award in January. Flight control and image processing are not peripheral features. They are the drone. Losing rights to them wouldn't just be a courtroom setback — it could threaten the entire Antigravity product line.
The China Patent Strategy analysis of the doctrine notes that the Supreme Court's 2019 landmark case established a four-factor test: job responsibilities, relation of the patent to prior work, the employer's own R&D trajectory, and the plausibility of the inventor's claimed independent development path. Courts have historically leaned toward employers. The standard is broad — DJI doesn't need to prove the patents are identical to its own work, only that they're substantially related to the engineers' prior duties. Historically, that has not been a high bar.
The competitive picture makes the timing impossible to read as coincidental. As KR Asia detailed in an August 2025 analysis of the Shenzhen rivalry, these two companies share a city, overlapping supplier networks, and a product market that has spent the last year collapsing the previously separate categories they operated in. DJI commands over 70% of the global consumer drone market and reported 80 billion RMB in 2024 revenue. Insta360 holds 81% of the global panoramic camera market. For most of their histories, they didn't compete directly. That changed in July 2025, when Insta360 announced the Antigravity drone brand — one day before DJI announced its own push into panoramic cameras. Neither blinked.
The DJI Avata 360, launching March 26, is DJI's answer to the A1: an 8K 360-degree FPV drone with LiDAR navigation, tiltable camera, and DJI's O4 video transmission system. As DroneXL reported from leaked pricing data, it's expected to retail at roughly $496 base — versus the A1's $1,599. That's not competition on specs. That's a price designed to make the comparison academic.
Insta360's recent legal record might look encouraging at first glance. Three weeks ago the company won a USITC case against GoPro, with all five utility patent claims dismissed on February 26, clearing Insta360 to sell in the US without restriction. But that was a US proceeding in which Insta360 was the defendant successfully fighting off an external challenger on neutral-to-friendly legal ground. This is a Chinese court, in DJI's home city, under a legal framework that favors employers, involving engineers who — if the anonymous-inventor detail checks out — appear to have had reason not to want their identities attached to these patents.
The people at the center of this case matter beyond the courtroom. Engineers who leave large tech firms to join or start rivals are a normal feature of any healthy tech ecosystem. In Shenzhen, where both DJI and Insta360 drew engineers from the same Peacock talent program and share component suppliers, that mobility has been part of the design. The service inventions doctrine, applied aggressively, could redraw those lines with legal force. If DJI wins here, the message to every engineer who left a Chinese tech company to build something new is clear: your former employer's reach may extend a year past your last day.
That's the story running underneath the stock drop and the product launches. Not just who ends up holding the patents. Who gets to own what they built.