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.
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