Did Apple buy China’s courts? 60 engineers blow the whistle, claiming judges outsourced rulings to Apple’s lawyers in a patent fight.
In a stunning turn of events, a landmark Chinese patent case pitting China IWNCOMM Co., Ltd. (IWNCOMM) against Apple Inc. has been thrust back into the spotlight—not for its legal merits, but for explosive allegations of judicial corruption. Sixty engineers from IWNCOMM, the company that once celebrated a high-profile victory over Apple in a standard-essential patent (SEP) dispute, have issued a public letter accusing China’s judiciary of systemic malfeasance, raising questions about the integrity of the country’s intellectual property regime.
The case, widely regarded as a milestone in China’s SEP landscape, saw IWNCOMM triumph in 2022 when the Supreme People’s Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that Apple infringed on the company’s wireless networking patent, ordering the tech giant to pay damages. At the time, the decision was hailed as a victory for Chinese innovation and a signal of the country’s growing clout in global tech disputes. But the engineers’ March 9 letter, signed with their real names and backed by promises of evidence, paints a darker picture: one of manipulated rulings, collusive judges, and a legal system allegedly bent to favor powerful interests, including Apple itself.
“We founded IWNCOMM 20 years ago with dreams of innovation and faith in the rule of law,” the engineers wrote in their impassioned missive. They detailed their company’s achievements—pioneering technologies like tri-element peer authentication and quantum-resistant security protocols, amassing a portfolio of hundreds of patent families, and securing a spot as the 20th-ranked holder of SEP patents in ISO standards globally. Yet, they claim, their pursuit of “pure science” has been derailed by a judiciary they describe as rotten with corruption.
A Litany of Accusations
The engineers’ allegations are as detailed as they are damning. They accuse senior judges of outsourcing judicial authority to Apple’s lawyers, rigging jurisdictional rules to favor infringers, and slashing IWNCOMM’s rightful compensation through opaque legal maneuvers. Among the most shocking claims: a Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruling, stamped with an official seal on April 3, 2024, was allegedly drafted by Zhao Lihui, a lawyer from Beijing Zhide Law Firm representing Apple—not by the court itself. The engineers assert that judges Xie Zhenke, Lan Guohong, and Li Yingxin “rented out” their authority, with the Supreme People’s Court later rubber-stamping the “fraudulent” decision.
Further, they allege that a senior judge, identified elsewhere as having applied to join Apple’s legal team in 2015, intervened in a 2016 Shaanxi lawsuit to bar IWNCOMM from suing Apple’s Beijing subsidiary, dragging the case out for six years until the patent expired. In another instance, the engineers claim the Supreme People’s Court’s 2022 ruling—case (2022) Zhi Min Zhong No. 817—upheld the lower court’s decision on paper but quietly stripped IWNCOMM of billions of yuan in damages with a single, vague phrase: “hardly justifiable.” Presiding Judge Zhu Li, they allege, used this sleight of hand to funnel “off-the-books profits” to Apple.
Perhaps most brazenly, the engineers say draft judgments were sent to Apple’s lawyers for pre-approval—a charge leveled at a 2018 Beijing High Court ruling—and that a Peking University professor acted as a judicial “broker,” peddling influence over rulings in exchange for cooperation that IWNCOMM’s CEO, Cao Jun, refused.
A Cry for Justice
The engineers’ letter is not just a laundry list of grievances; it’s a desperate plea from scientists forced to trade lab coats for protest signs. “We worship the rule of law as we do science,” they wrote, lamenting that “judicial corruption has turned our pure research into a fragile bubble.” They’ve called on authorities to investigate, promising to submit signatures and evidence to back their claims, and have set up an email—[email protected]—for public outreach.
For IWNCOMM, a privately held firm that has poured over 2 billion yuan ($280 million) into R&D, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The company’s WAPI technology, a homegrown alternative to Wi-Fi, has long been a symbol of China’s push for tech sovereignty, even as it faced resistance from U.S.-backed standards. Its legal battles with Apple and others—Sony settled a similar case in 2018 for 9.1 million yuan—have been watched closely as a test of China’s ability to protect its innovators. Now, the engineers argue, that promise is unraveling.
Broader Implications
The allegations, if substantiated, could cast a shadow over China’s ambitions to become a global leader in intellectual property enforcement. Beijing has touted its courts as a fair arena for tech disputes, a narrative bolstered by high-profile wins like IWNCOMM’s. But the engineers’ claims of “judicial backyards” tailored for infringers and rulings tainted by private interests threaten to undermine that credibility—at a time when U.S.-China tech tensions are already sky-high.
Apple declined to comment on the allegations. The Supreme People’s Court and Beijing Intellectual Property Court did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Legal experts say the engineers’ move is unprecedented in its scope and specificity, though proving judicial corruption in China’s opaque system will be an uphill battle.
For now, the 60 engineers—whose names include Ma Yunlong, Wang Yuehui, and Zhang Xinghu—stand as a rare chorus of dissent from within China’s tech elite. Their fight, they say, is not just for IWNCOMM, but for the soul of Chinese innovation. “We expect to enjoy pure research under the protection of the law,” they wrote. Whether that hope survives this storm remains to be seen.