Huawei wins preliminary injunction in Motorola dispute

Motorola has been prevented from passing information to Nokia Siemens Networks

Telecoms company Huawei has secured a preliminary injunction in a US court to stop Motorola passing confidential information to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

At the same time, the Chicago federal judge denied Huawei's request that the transfer of Motorola Solutions' employees to NSN should be stopped, and a portion of the business should not be sold to NSN.

The China-based company sued last month, claiming that Motorola's plans to sell its wireless network infrastructure business to NSN would result in Huawei's trade secrets being passed to a competitor. Motorola resells Huawei products and so has access to some of its intellectual property.

The injunction prevents the information being passed to NSN pending resolution of the dispute.

In a statement, Huawei said it was "pleased that the court continues to recognise the merits of our claim that Motorola must abide by its contractual obligations to protect Huawei's trade secrets and intellectual property.

"We hope Motorola will now turn its focus to ensuring that Huawei's intellectual property rights are well protected."

Motorola spokesman Nicholas Sweers said the company was "extremely pleased that the judge denied that portion of Huawei's request that would have blocked our sale of the business to NSN".

Sweers said Motorola respects and will continue to protect Huawei's intellectual property, abiding by agreements that were signed five years ago. He said the deal with Nokia Siemens should go through by the end of March 2011, pending Chinese regulatory approval.

Motorola's networks infrastructure business provides products and services for wireless networks including GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE.

Motorola agreed in July 2010 to sell most of its wireless network infrastructure business to NSN in a deal worth $1.2bn (£0.74bn). NSN said that if the deal goes through, it will become the third-largest infrastructure vendor in the US.