Chinese telecom company fined $50M for conspiring to steal technology from Motorola Solutions
A federal judge in Chicago has fined a Chinese telecommunications company $50 million for criminally conspiring to steal proprietary technology from Chicago-based Motorola Solutions, Inc., according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois.
Motorola Solutions, whose global headquarters is in downtown Chicago, maintains an engineering campus in Schaumburg.
Beginning in 2006, China-based Hytera Communications Corp. LTD recruited and hired Motorola employees and directed them to take proprietary and trade secret information from Motorola without authorization, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The stolen information was related to Motorola’s digital mobile radio technology, which Motorola had developed through years of research and design. The engineers used the stolen information, including source code, to develop products for Hytera — at a fraction of the cost that it took Motorola to develop the exclusive technology — and competed with Motorola in the digital radio market through 2020, the office said.
Hytera pleaded guilty last year in the Northern District of Illinois to a federal charge of conspiracy to steal trade secrets.
U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. March 5 sentenced Hytera to a five-year term of probation, which includes conditions for maintaining an effective compliance program and annual reporting to the government. Tharp ordered Hytera to pay restitution of about $214 million, to be offset by payments previously made by Hytera as a result of a civil judgment, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Seven Hytera employees were indicted in 2021 in federal court in Chicago for their alleged roles in the thefts from Motorola. One of them — Gee Siong Kok — pleaded guilty in 2022 to a federal charge of conspiracy to steal trade secrets. As part of a plea agreement, Kok agreed to cooperate with the government in its investigation.
Kok is awaiting sentencing. Warrants have been issued for the arrests of the six other defendants.