Motorola sues China's Huawei Technologies

Motorola is claiming that Chinese electronics giant Huawei Technologies has been stealing its trade secrets.

The US mobile phone company is suing Huawei, following an earlier lawsuit originally filed back in 2008.

Sharing trade secrets

In that original case, Motorola sued a number of its former employees for allegedly selling some of its trade secrets with Chinese company Lemko, which has a reseller agreement with Huawei.

In an initial suit, filed in 2008, Motorola sued five of its former workers for allegedly sharing trade secrets with Lemko, which was also named in the suit and has a reseller agreement with Huawei.

In the latest amendment to this original complaint this month, Motorola claims on of these engineers gave information on a Motorola transceiver and other highly-confidential tech with Huawei's founder, Ren Zhengfei.

Groundless

Huawei has denied any wrongdoing, releasing the following statement:

"Huawei has no relationship with Lemko, other than a reseller agreement. Huawei will vigorously defend itself against baseless allegations."

Hong Kong-based Tech IP lawyer, Connie Carnabuci, told Reuters: "Cases involving misappropriation of proprietary information are usually very difficult cases to run.

"This case is being brought in the courts of the United States, one thing interesting is that decisions of the U.S. courts are not enforceable in China.

"There is a lot of attention amongst Chinese companies and (multinational companies) doing business in China where people are looking at their business practices and ways to minimize unauthorized leakage of information."

Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson added "We don't comment on pending litigation, but will continue to vigorously defend our IP (intellectual property)."

Via Reuters