In November, 2011, IP Dragon posed the question: Is American Superconductor (AMSC) the 21st century version of Don Quixote?, when it sued Sinovel Wind Group of Beijing for violation of trade secrets and software copyright infringement and demanded damages of 1.2 billion U.S. dollar, read here.
AMSC has filed four law suits against Sinovel Wind Group, her old customer.
After Hainan Higher Court’s decided on April 5, 2012 to uphold the Hainan Province No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court’s to dismiss AMSC’s law suit against Sinovel Wind Group Co., Ltd. (Sinovel) and Dalian Guotong Electric Co., Ltd. (Guotong) in which it claims 200,000 U.S. dollar in damages.
AMSC gives her rationale for the appeal to the Supreme People’s Court, read here:
- “Pursuant to AMSC’s contracts with Sinovel, AMSC has turned to the Beijing Arbitration Commission to resolve its contractual disputes. However, AMSC’s Hainan case is purely a copyright infringement dispute rather than a contractual matter. As such, it is independent of the contracts and belongs within the civil court system.”
- “In November 2011, Sinovel filed a motion on identical grounds to dismiss a separate copyright infringement case from the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court, saying the matter should be governed by the Beijing Arbitration Commission. As previously reported, on February 14, 2012, the Beijing court properly denied Sinovel’s motion to dismiss the case. The Beijing No.1 Intermediate Court stated the software copyright infringement dispute between AMSC and Sinovel is not a dispute “arising from, or in connection with the execution of the contract” and should not be sent to an arbitration institution. Therefore, the jurisdiction opposition raised by Sinovel lacks factual and legal basis and is inadmissible.”
- “Sinovel’s December 2011 opposition motion requested that AMSC’s case against Sinovel be dismissed by the Hainan Province No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court. Guotong, however, never filed a jurisdictional opposition motion of its own. Despite this fact, the Hainan court dismissed AMSC’s case against both Sinovel and Guotong. Indeed, as there is no contractual relationship between AMSC and Guotong, it is impossible to solve the dispute between AMSC and Guotong through arbitration. Moreover, as Sinovel and Guotong are codefendants, it is impossible to separate them so that they would be governed by a court and arbitration commission, respectively.“
Although a court, such as the Hainan Province No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court might favour that legal conflicts are solved via arbitration, AMSC is right that if there is no contract, and there is a copyright infringement case, it should be solved via litigation.
Read also Ehren Goossens Business Week article here. It is not known when the Supreme People’s Court will decide on this case. To be continued.