New Jersey steps into dispute over GE’s wind turbines
US state opposes a permanent injunction bid by a German tech company | General Electric was found by a Massachusetts court in June this year to have infringed a wind turbine patent | State-sponsored renewable energy project ‘at risk’.
The state of New Jersey has implored a Massachusetts court to reject Siemens Gamesa’s bid to block General Electric’s wind turbines, claiming that a ban on the turbines would cause "irreparable harm to the state and its citizenry”.
New Jersey yesterday, August 15, filed a motion for leave to file a supplemental amicus curiae brief in response to Siemens Gamesa’s motion for a permanent injunction.
In June this year, a jury in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts concluded that GE had infringed a Siemens Gamesa’s wind turbine patent. The jury also found that another GE patent related to wind turbines was invalid.
According to the jury, Siemens Gamesa should receive a reasonable royalty rate of $30,000 per megawatt.
Now, Siemens Gamesa has asked the court to grant a permanent injunction. If granted, New Jersey claims the ban would “make it impossible” to complete a state-sponsored wind project in a timely fashion.
“Without relief, there will therefore be unavoidable effects to the State’s progress in pursuing clean energy alternatives through offshore wind energy,” said New Jersey in its amicus brief.
New Jersey’s Ocean Wind project consists of approximately 100 offshore windmills designed with the Haliade-X turbines, manufactured by GE, which are the subject of this lawsuit.
The state claimed that any harm to Siemens Gamesa can be redressed with damages, rather than an injunction.
New Jersey urged the court to "give significant weight to the negative effects on the public interest that a broad injunction would pose” and exclude its project from the injunction.
“In short, this is one of those cases in which the egg was scrambled for an innocent sovereign state—and a disruptive injunction, in place of traditional money damages, cannot be the proper remedy,” added the brief.
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