Motorola Solutions has won a trade secret theft and copyright infringement case against Chinese rival Hytera Communications Corp, for which it has been awarded $764.6 million in damages. Hytera, however, has pledged to appeal.

"A jury in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has decided in favour of Motorola Solutions in its trade secret theft and copyright infringement case against Hytera Communications Corporation of Shenzhen, China; Hytera America, Inc.; and Hytera Communications America (West), Inc. (collectively, "Hytera")," Motorola Solutions said in a press release on Friday.

In connection with this verdict, the jury awarded Motorola Solutions $345.8 million in compensatory damages and $418.8 million in punitive damages, for a total of $764.6 million. "Motorola Solutions was awarded the maximum amount it requested," the tech giant said.

Following this verdict, the company will seek a worldwide injunction preventing Hytera from further misappropriating Motorola Solutions' stolen trade secrets and infringing its copyrights, it said.

"Today's verdict is a tremendous victory for our company," said Greg Brown, chairman and CEO, Motorola Solutions. "Motorola Solutions has always invested significantly in research and development to bring pioneering and beneficial technology to our customers around the world. In contrast, Hytera was simply profiting off of the hard work and innovation of our world-class engineers. The jury's verdict validates our global litigation against Hytera by definitively affirming that stealing trade secrets and source code will not be tolerated."

Motorola Solutions had filed the trade secret theft complaint on March 14, 2017, alleging that Hytera's two-way radios and repeaters utilising stolen Motorola Solutions trade secrets. The company amended its complaint on July 30, 2018, to include copyright infringement allegations, asserting that Hytera also unlawfully copied Motorola Solutions' source code into the source code used in Hytera products in violation of US copyright laws.

The evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Hytera stole over 10,000 Motorola Solutions confidential documents, millions of lines of Motorola Solutions' highly confidential source code and took steps to conceal its theft to avoid detection, it added.

"Remarkably, after steadfastly denying any wrongdoing in the years prior to trial, Hytera admitted during trial that in fact it has those thousands of Motorola Solutions confidential documents in its possession and that even today some of its products still contain stolen Motorola Solutions source code," Motorola said.

By Chitranjan Kumar