A US jury has cleared California semiconductor designer CNEX Labs of stealing trade secrets from Huawei while awarding CNEX no damages on its own trade theft counter claims.
The jury did find, however, that one of the company’s founders, a former Huawei employee Yiren Huang, did fail to notify Huawei of his patent filing which was a stipulation of his employment contract with Huawei.
The conditions of the contract required Huang to tell Huawei of any patents obtained within a year of leaving the company, Reuters reports.
Huawei had sued CNEX in US District Court in Sherman, Texas, for misappropriation of trade secrets involving a memory control technology and for poaching its employees.
CNEX filed a counter suit, alleging Huawei sought to steal its technology by posing as a customer and calling the original claims part of a pattern by Huawei to obtain others’ secrets.
The company is reviewing the decision and considering its next moves, said Tim Danks, a Huawei vice-president for risk management.
