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Huawei has been accused of intellectual property violations before. In 2003, Cisco Systems alleged the company stole its router code. What Do You Say? Click Here to Send Us Your Comments Click Here to See Reader Feedback

Despite continuous promises and some action by the Chinese government, protection of intellectual property remains at the top of the list of concerns for US and European companies in terms of doing business in China. Motorola is the latest company to expose the issues, filing a lawsuit last week accusing manufacturing partner Huawei of a multi-year scheme to steal its latest wireless network technology.

Motorola had originally filed a the suit in 2008, but that legal action was focused on a small company called Lemko, of Schaumburg, Illinois. Last week, Motorola amended the suit to directly charge Huawei Technologies, one of China’s largest and most global corporations, of collusion in the industrial espionage effort.

The original lawsuit charged five former Motorola employees, four of whom held Chinese citizenship and another who held both U.S. and Chinese citizenship, with stealing its trade secrets. They were accused in part of accessing and transferring Motorola's intellectual property to a company called Lemko, which Motorola says they were secretly working for.

But in the amended filing, Motorola alleges information from Lemko was being fed directly to  Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, and said as many as 13 of its employees were involved in the transfer of valuable cellular technical secrets to Huawei and possibly others.

"Defendant Shaowei Pan was a trusted senior engineer and director of architecture working full time at Motorola on the development of new products and new technologies for Motorola," according to the amended complaint. "However, as set forth below, defendant Shaowei Pan and the other defendants secretly were engaged in new product development for Huawei."

The suit says the flow of information from Motorola to Huawei went on for years during the past decade.

Huawei called the complaint "utterly without merit" and said Lemko was simply a supplier of equipment for the company.

Lemko has claimed in court filings that Motorola has falsely attacked it in an attempt to put it out of business and take over its proprietary technology, which involves developments in a field Motorola overlooked for years. "It is unfortunate that Motorola continues to define its success by the number of frivolous lawsuits it commences," a Lemko spokesman said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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