Motorola Solutions secures $765m verdict in trade secrets suit
An Illinois jury has awarded communications company Motorola Solutions $764.6 million in its trade secret and copyright infringement case against China-based Hytera Communications.
In an announcement shared on Friday, February 14, Motorola Solutions said that a jury at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois had awarded it $345.8 million in compensatory damages and $418.8 million in punitive damages.
According to the jury, competitor Hytera had used Motorola Solutions’ confidential documents and copyright-protected source code to compete in the two-way radio market.
Motorola Solutions had originally accused Hytera of patent infringement and trade secrets theft, in a claim filed in March 2017. The patent infringement case is now separate and is expected to proceed to trial in late 2020 or early 2021.
The company subsequently amended its complaint in July the following year, to include copyright infringement allegations, asserting that Hytera had unlawfully copied Motorola Solutions’ source code into the source code used in Hytera products.
In response to the copyright addition, Hytera claimed that the motion was an act of “desperation” and accused Motorola Solutions of changing its strategic focus from innovation to litigation.
After Friday’s verdict, Motorola Solutions said that it would now seek a worldwide injunction preventing Hytera from “further misappropriating its stolen trade secrets and infringing its copyrights”.
The verdict was the maximum amount that Motorola Solutions had asked the jury to award.
Greg Brown, chairman and CEO of Motorola Solutions, said: “Motorola Solutions has always invested significantly in research and development to bring pioneering and beneficial technology to our customers around the world. In contrast, Hytera was simply profiting off of the hard work and innovation of our world-class engineers.”
Motorola Solutions said that the evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Hytera had stolen more than 10,000 confidential documents, millions of lines of Motorola Solutions’ highly confidential source code and took steps to conceal its theft to avoid detection.
“Remarkably, after steadfastly denying any wrongdoing in the years prior to trial, Hytera admitted during trial that in fact it has those thousands of Motorola Solutions confidential documents in its possession and that even today some of its products still contain stolen Motorola Solutions source code,” said the company.
Kirkland & Ellis is acting as legal counsel to Motorola Solutions.
Mike De Vries, partner at the firm, said: “This positive outcome, in combination with the findings of other courts in jurisdictions around the world, further validates Motorola Solutions’ global litigation against Hytera. Kirkland is committed to defending our clients’ valuable IP.”
Hytera’s lawsuit against Motorola Solutions, which alleges that it has engaged in a serial pattern of sham litigation” and regulatory actions to impede Hytera, is pending.
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