Honestly, there's something VERY fishy about this patent, as well as the lawsuit. Autel Robotics was founded in 2014, yet the application for the patent occurred in 2013. Dig a little deeper, and you'll discover that the patent is NOT owned by Autel Robotics...it's actually owned by Draganfly Innovations (a Canadian company, with strong ties to US military, and law enforcement). This raises a VERY interesting question about how one company could file a patent infringement lawsuit against another company, using a patent owned by a third company (note: Draganfly Innovations has NO connection to Autel Robotics, its parent company (Autel Intelligent Technology Corp., Ltd), or DJI).
If you look at the drawings that accompany the patent application, you'll easily notice they look identical to the Draganflyer Commander & Draganflyer X4-P (Draganfly Innovations' only other current drone, the M600Pro, interestingly-enough, looks almost identical to the Yuneec Typhoon H). So, this raises the question of HOW Autel was able to not only file a patent infringement lawsuit against DJI, but how Autel was able to keep the lawsuit alive. As most people know, DJI has the great majority of the market, especially in the US. Is this just another example of the 'little' guy being afraid of the 'big' guy, and wanting to "take them down a notch, or three". If so, that doesn't answer the question of how the lawsuit survived, as Autel, obviously, has NO legal right to file a patent infringement lawsuit against another company when they neither own, nor have the rights to, the patent in question.
