In early May, Hong Kong-listed online health platform Ping An Good Doctor (stock code 01833.HK) launched an app named “Health Guardian” that monitors heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen in real time, only to outrage an artificial intelligence startup.  

Xueyang Technology has sued Ping An Good Doctor for “improper competition” and “infringement on commercial secrets and technology secrets.”

Xueyang told TMTPost that the product, unveiled by China's dominant player in online healthcare services on May 8, was very similar to their product.

“The slogan to promote the product is exactly the same – word by word – as ours,” said an employee of Xueyang, adding that Ping An Good Doctor, officially known as Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Ltd., had access to their secret technology document and promotion materials relating to a pre-warming watch app named “Andun”, under the pretext of bilateral cooperation.

Xueyang Technology revealed that Ping An Good Doctor’s Chief Innovation Officer Chen Weijun and product manager Yu Hongyan communicated with Xueyang Technology and plagiarized their product idea in the name of “exchange and communications”.  

In response to the accusations, Yu alleged that both the chips and algorithm of the “Health Guardian” app were different from “Andun”, adding that their chips were imported from Israel. She defended the similarity of their product with Xueyang’s, citing the resemblance between Xiaomi’s watch band and Huawei’s in terms of appearance attributes.      

“Only if chips, coding and algorithm are exactly the same, you are justified to say it is plagiarism, “said Yu.

The public relations office of Ping An Good Doctor refuted the alleged plagiarism by saying: “Not one line of coding is sourced from Xueyang Technology.”

In April 2015, Ping An Good Doctor received US$400 million private placement from Softbank Vision Fund. In May 2018, the company was listed on the HKEx, becoming the world’s first online healthcare platform that connects doctors with patients to go public. In September 2019, the online platform announced its registered user base surpassed the 300 million mark.

The platform issued an announcement on May 9, denying its infringement on any other company’s commercial secrets and threatening to sue Xueyang for defamation.

Xueyang Technology’s CEO Ma Jianfei told TMTPost on Wednesday that Ping An’s response was to divert the attention of the public to “chips and coding”. He clarified that his company did not sue them for breach of intellectual property rights but for “improper competition and infringement of commercial secrets.”

Also on Wednesday, Xueyang Technology held a press conference, claiming that the dominant player did not simply plagiarize but copied technological rationale and App page design of their product “Andun”.