Huawei has asked a US district court to put the stoppers on Nokia Siemens Network’s $1.2 billion (€879 million) acquisition of Motorola’s infrastructure assets, claiming the deal includes some of its IP.
The Chinese vendor has filed a suit against Motorola seeking a preliminary injunction on the transfer of disputed assets to NSN, claiming it will suffer irreparable commercial damage if the deal goes ahead as it stands, and asking for arbitration of the matter.
Huawei claims Motorola has failed to respond to its requests for assurances the IP would not be transferred as part of the sale, which it has made since NSN announced the acquisition in July.
The IP was included in GSM, UMTS and other networking technologies Huawei supplied to Motorola as part of a co-operation deal signed in 2000. Motorola re-branded the technologies as its own as part of that agreement.
Huawei’s filing explains that NSN is a direct competitor, and states that the transfer “will result in the massive disclosure of Huawei’s confidential information,” to the European firm.
The move is the latest set-back to the closing of NSN’s acquisition after Chinese anti monopoly regulators delayed the deal in late December.
NSN originally hoped to conclude the transaction by end-2010, having gained approval from antitrust regulators in several global markets, but is now targeting completion by the end of the current calendar quarter.