Meituan and Ele.me go back to court in March as the bitter rivals continue fight over smart locker patents
- Meituan will defend itself against claims of patent infringement from Ele.me in Chongqing starting March 6, the latest in a series of legal challenges
- The patents revolve around smart lockers, which surged in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic as people ordered more online while trying to limit contact
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Meituan and Ele.me did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
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From April to August last year, Ele.me sued Meituan subsidiaries Shanghai Sankuai Technology and Beijing Sankuai Technology in at least three cases in Chongqing and eastern provinces Jiangsu and Zhejiang, according to corporate data provider Qichacha.
Two of the lawsuits revolve around patents ZL202011424073.5 and ZL202110527378.7 that were awarded to Ele.me in February and May 2021, respectively. The first is for allowing third-party companies to access proprietary lockers, while the second involves a method of allowing customers to retrieve their orders from lockers without using passwords.
The use of smart lockers has spread rapidly in China over the past three years, when millions of people confined to their homes during lockdowns relied heavily on food delivery platforms while also seeking to reduce unnecessary contact with others.
Three days after Wuhan announced a lockdown on January 23, 2020, Meituan started piloting contactless takeaway orders in the capital city of China’s central Hubei province, where more than 11 million people reside.
Two months later, the Beijing-based tech giant said it would distribute 1,000 smart lockers across the country, which Ele.me followed with its own announcement claiming it would distribute 3,000 such lockers.
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Favourable policies from Beijing further heated up the competition the following year. The State Administration for Market Regulation, along with several other government bodies, advocated in July 2021 for the roll-out of delivery lockers to improve convenience.
Meituan and Ele.me scrambled for bigger pieces of the smart locker pie, equipping their units with technologies such as carbon fibre insulated heating wire to keep food warm and ultraviolet light for sanitisation. They have also both tested unmanned delivery and smart helmets for riders.
The competition between the two firms has become especially fierce since the once-dominant Ele.me fell behind in the food delivery race in 2018. By the second quarter of 2020, Meituan had 68 per cent of the market, according to Northwest Securities, and its share has hovered around 70 per cent since then.
