Australian court rules on Motorola v Hytera clash
Victory for US company follows import of digital radios | Ex-Motorola employees alleged to have developed the company’s source code after joining rival | IP relates to tech that allows multiple people to use the same channel.
In a victory for Motorola Solutions, the Federal Court of Australia has concluded that China-based Hytera Communications has infringed Motorola’s patent and copyright.
In a ruling handed down on 23 December, the court held that Hytera has infringed one of Motorola’s patents through the import of digital mobile radios into Australia.
However, the court also accepted that Hytera didn’t infringe the patent after November 2019 when it upgraded existing mobile stations.
Motorola had accused Hytera of infringing three patents through the import of digital mobile radios. Each of the patents relate to Time Division Multiple Access, a pre-existing technology which “permits a frequency band within the radio spectrum (a channel) to be divided into timeslots so that more than one person may use the same channel at the same time”.
The Australian court also rejected Motorola’s infringement cases on two of the patents and its bid for additional damages for patent infringement.
On the copyright front, the court concluded that Hytera had copied a substantial part of 6 of the 11 computer programs Motorola accused the Chinese company of copying.
Motorola had alleged that Hytera had developed its source code by copying Motorola’s own source code back in 2008, when several ex-Motorola employees joined Hytera to develop its digital mobile radio products.
The court agreed that Hytera’s action constituted a “substantial industrial theft” and that Motorola was entitled to additional damages on account of the “flagrancy of the infringements”.
The reasons for the court’s decision will be made publicly available early in 2023.
Mark Hacker, general counsel and chief administrative officer of Motorola Solutions, said the company was pleased that the court recognised that Hytera unlawfully copied proprietary source code and is infringing Motorola’s patent rights.
“The evidence of Hytera’s egregious theft and blatant infringement of our patents, trade secrets and copyrights is overwhelming, and today’s victory further validates our efforts to protect our intellectual property for the benefit of our industry, customers, channel and distribution partners, shareholders and other stakeholders,” said Hacker.
According to a press release from Motorola, the injunctive relief granted by the court will restrain Hytera from making, importing, offering to sell, selling or otherwise distributing in Australia digital mobile radio products that are capable of performing Motorola Solutions’ patented methods or reproduce Motorola Solutions’ copyrighted source code.
The dispute between the pair has spanned time and space. Back in 2018, Motorola secured injunctions against Hytera in Germany, after the Regional Court of Düsseldorf found that Hytera’s two-way digital mobile radio subscriber radios infringed European patent (EP) 2,342,851B1.
In the same year, the US International Trade Commission upheld allegations of patent infringement against Hytera.
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