American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC), a U.S. maker of wind-turbine components, saidChina’s highest court agreed to hear an intellectual-property suit against Sinovel Wind Group Co.
The case is seeking $200,000 in damages and is the smallest of four suits AMSC is pursuing in China against its former largest customer, the Devens, Massachusetts-based company said in an e-mailed statement today.
AMSC is seeking a total of more than $1.2 billion in damages from China’s biggest turbine maker for allegedly violating sales contracts and stealing its technology. Sinovel stopped accepting contracted shipments in March 2011. A former AMSC employee in Austria pleaded guilty in September to charges including economic espionage for passing software to Sinovel.
A provincial court dismissed the $200,000 case in February and AMSC filed its appeal with China’s Supreme People’s Court in April. The copyright infringement suit also names Dalian Guotong Electric Co. as a defendant.
AMSC said in the statement that there is a “significant amount of evidence that its copyrighted software is being infringed.”
(Source: Bloomberg)
