From business battles to the courtroom: DJI has finally launched a patent war against Insta360.
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Author | Huang Yu
Recently, DJI submitted a lawsuit to the Intermediate People's Court of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, formally escalating its face-off with Insta360 in core business areas into a powerful legal counterattack.
According to Wallstreetcn, the case is directly targeting six patent ownership disputes, focused on key technical fields such as drone flight control, structural design, and image processing. The court has officially filed the case.
This is the first time DJI has initiated such patent ownership disputes domestically, illustrating the unusual nature and tension of this case.
DJI pointed out in the lawsuit that the patents involved were inventions created by former employees within one year of leaving DJI, and these inventions are closely related to their job duties at DJI.
On March 23, Insta360 founder and CEO Liu Jingkang responded on Weibo: "DJI suing Insta360, everyone just wait for the normal evidence collection and investigation process in court. This kind of competition among tech companies is common; most of our resources will still be invested in the 7 or 8 new products and series this year."
He specifically mentioned: "To protect our own legal rights, we spent more than $10 million overseas to win the GoPro case, and we're approaching this with the same mindset."
This unexpected legal battle has exposed only the tip of the iceberg in the increasingly intense cross-industry tussle between Insta360 and DJI.
In recent years, Insta360 has made huge strides globally with its 360 cameras, occupying an absolute dominant position in its niche segment.
However, when Insta360 tried, with great ambition, to enter DJI’s core area using panoramic drones, it faced not only DJI’s counterattack in products and ecosystem, but also a legal and patent offensive against core technologies.
As the global leader in consumer-grade drones, DJI's lawsuit is not only a firm defense of its core technological assets, but it also declares to the market: Insta360’s “drone gamble” to break its own ceiling is facing an extremely expensive price.
Counter-Offensive Lawsuit
For DJI, the drone market is an absolute forbidden zone for technical barriers. If Insta360 makes a shortcut through "improper technology transfer," it will certainly touch DJI's bottom line.
In this case, several former DJI core R&D staff are alleged to be involved, and Insta360's concealment of inventors in domestic patent applications has also become the focus of the dispute.
Liu Jingkang responded: "Many of Insta360's patents conceal inventors during domestic applications but are disclosed during PCT filings because we want to respect inventors while delaying exposure of technical personnel lists and headhunting (this is also why the system was invented). Many of our patent applications also hide inventors who were not former DJI employees."
Liu Jingkang stated that DJI's demand is for patent ownership arising within one year of employee departure to belong to DJI.
"We carefully reviewed the patents applied by the involved employees during that period, and existing evidence shows all were ideas and independent innovations developed within Insta360." Additionally, Liu stated that most drone patent applications relating to the case were from 4-5 years ago, and many have not been used due to later product definition changes.
In July last year, Insta360 first announced its entry into the drone industry, planning to launch two drone brands: its own and a panoramic drone brand "Yingling Antigravity," co-incubated with a third party.
By the end of last year, Insta360 officially released Yingling A1, the world's first panoramic drone.
This direct competition with DJI is undoubtedly costly.
Insta360's R&D expenses reached 524 million yuan in Q3 last year, up 164.81% year-on-year, nearly equal to the 560 million invested in the first half. For all of 2025, R&D totaled 1.65 billion yuan, up 112.4% year-on-year.
Additionally, according to Insta360’s 2025 earnings report, while total annual revenue rose 76.58% year-on-year to about 9.86 billion yuan, attributable net profit declined 3% to 960 million yuan.
The outbreak of patent disputes is seen as DJI's strong counterattack to Insta360’s “crossing the line” into drones.
In the fiercely competitive consumer electronics sector, using patent enforcement to block competitors is already an important measure for giants to protect their interests.
Not long ago, Insta360 just emerged from its lawsuit with traditional sports camera giant GoPro.
In March 2024, GoPro filed an application to the US International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging that Insta360 and its US subsidiary’s products infringed on six US intellectual property rights, covering invention and design patents.
During this lengthy and costly response, Insta360 set up a special working group to defend itself, not only launching compliant new designs but also suing GoPro’s relevant entities in China for patent infringement.
It was not until February 2026 that ITC made a final decision, finding three involved invention patents invalid or partially invalid and the products non-infringing; most other patent accusations were dismissed, and Insta360 narrowly avoided a crisis and retained its US sales privilege.
Liu Jingkang commented: "GoPro and DJI suing us, I fully understand the mentality of giants losing market share."
Testing the Territory
Having just pulled its leg out of GoPro's patent quagmire, Insta360 has now turned and fallen into a lawsuit with DJI—destined to be a see-saw battle.
This lawsuit by DJI against Insta360 is highly similar to GoPro’s previous attack—using IP as the sharpest weapon to block competitors from entering core areas.
DJI's share of the global consumer-grade drone market has long exceeded 70%, with more than a decade of technical accumulation in areas like flight control, image transmission, and structural design.
As a newcomer, Insta360 has been deploying in drones for years. Since July 1, 2020, Insta360 has continuously registered multiple "drone" and "panoramic drone" patents, covering drone structure, propellers, power systems, and other segments.
Facing a hegemon like DJI, the reason Insta360 is betting big on drones stems from the growth ceiling in the panoramic camera segment and founder Liu Jingkang’s vast ambition.
Insta360's management also cited in last year's semiannual report the reasons for entering drones, saying the category has higher market scale limits and many unmet needs, thus enough room for market and business expansion.
For a strong opponent like DJI, Liu Jingkang once commented that DJI is much stronger than most people perceive.
He said: "In making decisions, we anticipated that this move would provoke DJI to ‘raid’ panoramic cameras, but even at that cost, we chose to set sail five years ago."
The launch process of Yingling A1 was full of twists. Only a few days after its release, it was accused of poor sales.
But Liu Jingkang disagrees, citing data that Yingling sold more than 30 million yuan in just 48 hours in China.
As of January 4, 2026, Yingling A1’s first month shipment exceeded 30,000 units.
Even though Insta360 is trying to prove it has broken into the drone field, it still faces quite a few challenges to truly establish itself in this area.
Galaxy Securities analysts point out that the Yingling A1’s positioning is innovative, but the supply chain lacks scale effect, costs are high, and in flight experience it falls short of DJI.
In this vast tech sky, Insta360 wanting to truly fly shoulder-to-shoulder with the giant may still require enduring a long and costly period of pain.
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