Chinese wind turbine maker Sinovel Wind Group Co (華銳風電) was on Wednesday convicted in the US on charges that it stole trade secrets from American Superconductor Corp (AMSC), causing the Massachusetts-based company to lose more than US$800 million.
A federal jury in Madison, Wisconsin, found Sinovel, once one of AMSC’s largest customers, guilty on all charges it faced, including conspiracy, trade-secret theft and wire fraud, the US Department of Justice said.
The conviction exposes Beijing-based Sinovel to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential fines, the department said.
It is scheduled to be sentenced on June 4.
Sinovel, which yesterday morning saw its shares slide 4 percent on the news, will take legal measures to protect its rights and interests as well as those of its shareholders, it said in a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The stock has lost 46 percent since the charges were brought in June 2013, giving it a market value of about US$1.4 billion.
The charges were announced amid heightened concern about Chinese theft of US trade secrets and a legal battle in the Chinese courts pitting AMSC against Sinovel, one of the world’s largest turbine makers.
The conviction also comes as the US studies possible intellectual property action against China. US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on Wednesday said that China’s tech ambitions represent a direct threat that is being implemented by disrespect for “intellectual property rights, by commercial espionage.”
The case centered on technology that AMSC developed to regulate the flow of electricity from wind turbines to electrical grids, which Sinovel purchased for its products.
Prosecutors said that as of March 2011, Sinovel owed AMSC US$100 million for products that had been delivered and had contracts to buy more than US$700 million in future products.
However, they said Sinovel beginning in 2011 conspired to obtain AMSC’s copyrighted information and trade secrets so that it could make wind turbines and retrofit existing ones to avoid having to pay AMSC.
An indictment said that Sinovel recruited Dejan Karabasevic, an employee of an AMSC subsidiary, to join the Chinese company and to secretly copy information from AMSC’s computer system, including the source code for the PM3000, part of its wind turbine control system.
Sinovel then commissioned several wind turbines in Massachusetts and incorporated into them software that the Chinese company compiled from the stolen PM3000 source code, prosecutors said.
The justice department said that AMSC subsequently lost more than US$1 billion in shareholder equity and almost 700 jobs.
“Sinovel nearly destroyed an American company by stealing its intellectual property,” Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said in a statement.
Charges are pending against Karabasevic, who lives in Serbia, and two individuals who live in China and worked for Sinovel at the time, Su Liying (蘇麗營), the deputy director of its research and development department, and Zhao Haichun (趙海春), a technology manager, according to court records.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Nintendo Co hopes to match the runaway success of the Switch when its leveled-up new console hits shelves on Thursday, with strong early sales expected despite the gadget’s high price. Featuring a bigger screen and more processing power, the Switch 2 is an upgrade to its predecessor, which has sold 152 million units since launching in 2017 — making it the third-best-selling video game console of all time. However, despite buzz among fans and robust demand for pre-orders, headwinds for Nintendo include uncertainty over US trade tariffs and whether enough people are willing to shell out. The Switch 2 “is priced relatively high”
RSS