A Chinese court has ruled against Apple by upholding the validity of a patent held by a Chinese Zhizhen Internet Technology, meaning that the Chinese company my continue its own case against Apple for infringing intellectual property rights. Apple had taken Shanghai-based Zhizhen Internet Technology and China's State Intellectual Property Office to court to seek a ruling that Zhizhen's patent rights to a speech recognition technology were invalid.

But according to the People's Daily state newspaper, the Beijing First Intermediate Court on Tuesday decided in Zhizhen's favor.

After the verdict, Apple said it intended to take the case to the Beijing Higher People's Court, according to the People's Daily.

Zhizhen sued the U.S. firm in 2012 for intellectual property rights infringement, saying Apple's Siri used on devices including the iPhone violated Zhizhen's own voice system patents.

"Unfortunately, we were not aware of Zhizhen's patent before we introduced Siri (speech recognition technology) and we do not believe we are using this patent," said a Beijing-based Apple spokeswoman.

Apple said that it would remain open to reasonable discussions with Zhizhen.