Chinese outfit nicked our tech

MOBILE PHONE MAKER Motorola says it has evidence that its Chinese rival Huawei has been tapping ex-employees for corporate secrets.

Motorola is suing five of its former employees for allegedly taking trade secrets with them when they left to join Lemko. Lemko has a reseller agreement with Huawei, but the connection is somewhat weak.

But during the investigation, Motorola said that it uncovered an email in which one of the five was chatting about a new transceiver and other Motorola technology with Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei.

Motorola said it has recovered e-mail showing transmission of Motorola product specification documents marked "confidential" to Huawei.

Charlie Chen, Huawei's SVP of North American marketing, said in an e-mailed statement to Business Week that the complaint is groundless and utterly without merit. Huawei has no relationship with Lemko, other than a reseller agreement.

He said that Huawei will vigorously defend itself against baseless allegations.

Deservedly or not, Chinese phone makers are getting a lot of this sort of stick. Security fears related to the use of Chinese products has worried some governments. India blocked domestic phone companies from buying equipment made by Chinese vendors and the US government stepped in when Huawei tried to buy 3Com in 2008. µ