Patent dispute delays Youon’s IPO
May 8, 2017 Category IPR protection, Weekly
Bike-sharing app Youon called off its initial public offering (IPO) – the first one in the sector – after a patent dispute has emerged over its “Uber-style” rental business model. Youon Public Bicycle System, the Jiangsu province-based bike sharing company, has been accused of infringing upon the intellectual property rights relating to “no-pole bike renting systems and methods” in a lawsuit filed at a court in Nanjing, Jiangsu’s capital city. The lawsuit has been filed by Gu Tailai, Founder of Jiangsu SimLink, despite Youon’s IPO having gained the regulator’s approval in April and being set to kick off its online roadshow on May 5. Gu claims he owns the patent of the so-called dock-less bike rental system, which allows users to rent and return a bike whenever and wherever through mobile devices, a similar model adopted by most bike-sharing firms in China. Youon had hoped to raise CNY598 million from the listing and insists it has not violated Gu’s intellectual property rights, due to the difference in its “technological solution and functional approach”. But it has now suspended the IPO and is “carefully checking the issues raised, to protect the interests of investors”, it said. There are now about 30 Chinese start-ups in the bike-renting sector. Leading players such as Tencent-backed Mobike and Didi Chuxing-backed Ofo have secured hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars of funding by providing bike-rental services for as little as CNY1 per hour.
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