A jury will never hear claims that Motorola engaged in racial profiling of its Asian American employees in order to find trade secrets thieves. Nor will jurors hear allegations that Lemko Corporation, a rival wireless technology developer, helped an accused Chinese spy smuggle Motorola documents out of the country. That’s because Motorola, represented by Nixon Peabody and Winston & Strawn, and Lemko, represented by Niro, Haller & Niro, announced in a joint statement on Tuesday that they have settled all of their pending litigation.
The two companies had sued each for trade secrets theft, and Lemko had additionally brought an abuse of process suit against Motorola last November. The confidential settlement comes three weeks after Chicago federal district court judge Matthew Kennelly rejected Lemko’s motion for summary judgment on Motorola’s trade secrets theft clams, as we previously reported.
“We have resolved our differences in the litigation amicably,” said Motorola in the statement. Lemko CEO Nicholas Labun added that he is “pleased” with the resolution.
The feud between the two Chicago-area companies dates back to 2002, when a team of execs and engineers left Motorola to start Lemko. In 2008, Motorola filed suit in Chicago federal district court, accusing Lemko of conspiring with Hanjuan Jin, an ex-Motorola software engineer and naturalized U.S. citizen. Jin was charged with criminal espionage after customs agents stopped her at O’Hare Airport in 2007 with thousands of confidential Motorola documents and a one-way ticket to China in hand, according to federal prosecutors. (The judge has yet to rule in Jin’s bench trial.)
Motorola’s lawyers at Nixon and Winston changed tack in 2009, amending their original complaint to include more run-of-the-mill claims that Lemko higher-ups took confidential information with them when they left Motorola. The case morphed yet again in 2010, when Motorola added new allegations that Lemko funneled Motorola’s trade secrets to Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies. To our surprise, Motorola dropped Huawei from the case nine months later and paid it an undisclosed sum, after Huawei agreed to stop trying to block Nokia Siemens Networks from acquiring Motorola’s wireless networking business.
After bad press from the litigation sent Lemko’s profits into a dive, its lawyers at Niro, Haller went on the offensive. In November 2011, the company filed a complaint in Chicago state court accusing Motorola and Nixon Peabody of abuse of process and unfair competition, as we reported here. The complaint included an interesting allegation that Motorola “racially profiled” Asian-American employees as trade secrets thieves. A few weeks later Lemko filed a trade secrets theft complaint of its own.
“We think that Motorola’s lawsuit was entirely motivated by an effort to destroy these guys,” Lemko lead counsel Raymond Niro Sr. told us at the time. The ever-evolving theories of the case shows that “Motorola is searching desperately for a home for a legal theory that doesn’t exist,” he added.
Niro did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Nixon partner R. Mark Halligan, who represented Motorola, declined to comment.
This article originally appeared in The AmLaw Litigation Daily.
