Excellent post.. and I concur..
The way I see it, the Feds HAVE to exact their pound of flesh in this case, even with the settlement in the Chinese courts..
Certainly that settlement represents an attempt to demonstrate that the Chinese court system ultimately works to resolve legal disputes between corporate interests.
But Chinese courts NEVER filed criminal charges against Sinovel.. Only the EU and US courts filed criminal charges and obtained criminal convictions against Sinovel. So obviously the Chinese court system has a long way to go to protect the IP interests of foreigners operating in their country.
So they settled, for what most of us perceive as pennies on the dollar in China, because their courts didn't recognize the criminal nature of the IP theft. They settled in an attempt to mitigate any criminal damages/fines set for tomorrow at 9am in Wisconsin's Federal Court.
My question is how the Judge will perceive this settlement, and will it have any impact? To exact a large fine, which, as I understand it, is based upon a multiple of the damages, then they have to award large damages.
But the judge could suspend the full sentencing, based upon Sinovel's attempts to either re-implement and abide by the terms of the original $800 million contract, or awarding a percentage of the overall damages to be paid according to some schedule..
A lot of things the Judge can do to make AMSC whole, and also send a signal to Chinese companies that the US will not tolerate IP theft.
And THAT, is what the Trump administration asserts that they primarily concerned about.. IP theft..
Hawk |
