iPhone 5 Release Date Lawsuits: Copycat Chinese Company Threatens to Sue Apple at Launch?

New analysis shows the iPhone 5's humble manufacturing cost (Photo : Nowhereelse.fr)

In a strange twist of fate, Chinese Tech Company Goophone has built a smartphone based off of leaked iPhone 5 specs, patented the device, and has threatened to sue Apple for patent infringement when the phone they copied is released.

Goophone's youtube "advertisement" forgoes any subtlety and directly calls out the iPhone 5, making clear that they retain "independent intellectual property rights" and they will have the upper hand over Apple's device because "first operation has priority."

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The Chinese company "vow[s] to resist the iPhone 5 from outside the country," and claims that the iPhone's worldwide patents "raised a big stick" and have caused "global indignation."

Aesthetically, the Goophone is virtually indistinguishable from the iPhone, yet the company promises trademark issues, stating: "if the appearance of the iPhone is the same as [the] Goophone 15, that would be the history of iPad trademark repeat again."

To clarify, Apple paid $60 million to settle another patent infringement case involving the iPad with Chinese company Proview in July.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that "patent trolling" is a growing problem in China. According to He Jing, an intellectual property rights lawyer in Beijing, the iPad settlement "definitely stimulated more cases. That showed some people in China another way to get rich fast. Chinese companies learn this quickly."

Goophone has more than 500 employees and was founded in 2011, says Bloomberg. The company even has a knockoff of the Samsung Galaxy S3, the Goophone S3, available on its official site. About 530,000 patents were granted in China during the first half of the year alone.

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