In the smallest case, AMSC sought about $200,000 and a court order prohibiting Sinovel from using AMSC’s intellectual property. The case was dismissed Friday by a court in China’s Hainan Province, where AMSC filed a copyright infringement complaint against Sinovel and Dalian Guotong Electric Co., a supplier of power converter products.
The court, according to AMSC, agreed with Sinovel that the case should be governed by the Beijing Arbitration Commission, an organization meant to provide an impartial forum to resolve corporate disputes. AMSC, which has already filed a separate complaint with the commission, said it will appeal the court ruling.
“The Hainan court’s dismissal of our smallest case is not altogether unexpected,’’ said AMSC’s chief executive, Daniel P. McGahn, in a statement yesterday. “We continue to have confidence in all of our cases and expect that our legal actions will yield a positive outcome.’’
Sinovel could not be reached for comment, but the turbine maker previously denied stealing AMSC’s technology.
Through its arbitration case, AMSC is hoping to recoup $70 million owed for past product shipments and to get its contracts, worth about $700 million, enforced.
The company has also filed a trade secrets case with the Beijing Higher Court, where it hopes to recover $450 million, and another copyright infringement case in a lower Beijing court, where it is seeking about $6 million.
AMSC has a long way to go to rebound from its troubles with Sinovel, which once accounted for nearly 80 percent of the Devens firm’s revenues. The relationship started to sour last spring, when, months before AMSC began to suspect possible theft of its technology, Sinovel stopped accepting shipments of AMSC products.
The loss of the Chinese firm’s business caused AMSC’s stock to plunge from nearly $25 in April to just under $3.50 in October, and the Devens company ultimately had to halve its workforce. AMSC’s stock has since rebounded somewhat, and yesterday closed at $5.48, down 30 cents from Friday.
An investigation by AMSC eventually led the company to an engineer at a subsidiary in Austria. The man was later found guilty of stealing proprietary software and sentenced by Austrian authorities to a year in jail.
