US wind firm presses theft charge against China rival

US wind energy company AMSC said Monday it had filed three civil lawsuits in Chinese courts against rival Sinovel Wind Group Co., which it accused of stealing industrial secrets.

"AMSC is seeking to recover more than $1.2 billion for contracted shipments and damages from Sinovel in these cases, which stem from Sinovel's contractual breaches in March 2011 and AMSC's discovery of intellectual property theft by Sinovel employees in June 2011," the company said in a statement.

The two firms have been in legal wrangling since last year when the US group accused its Chinese partner of intellectual property theft.

AMSC has accused Sinovel of breaching its contract in March 2011 by refusing to accept delivery of equipment or to pay for items previously delivered.

After a former AMSC subsidiary employee was arrested in Austria on charges of economic espionage and fraudulent manipulation of data, the US firm said the person "improperly obtained and transferred to Sinovel portions of our wind turbine control software source code."

AMSC said it believed the former employee illegally used source code to develop for Sinovel a software modification to circumvent the encryption and remove technical protection measures for the technology.
Source:Yahoo