General Electric (GE) filed a lawsuit accusing “intentional and malicious appropriation of GE’s trade secrets” by Siemens Energy, accusing a current Siemens employee “knowingly and surreptitiously” of having received intellectual property from GE, the which prompted Siemens to use the information to improve its own bids for profitable gas turbine supply contracts for utilities.
GE, in the lawsuit filed on January 14, said the alleged stolen trade secrets resulted in the loss of a contract to provide gas turbine units and maintenance services for a project in Virginia, a business potentially valued at $ 340 million . GE said that “the trade secrets diverted by Siemens are relevant to at least eight other turbine contracts that Siemens unfairly won in GE’s bidding” over a 16-month period. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that Siemens has accumulated commercial gains of “billions of dollars in contracts” with the shares.
GE in the process also said that trade secrets are “directly relevant to an outstanding South Carolina RFP [request for proposal] for which GE is currently bidding on its gas turbine units against Siemens. ”
A GE spokesman said POWER, “At GE, we aggressively protect and defend our intellectual property. As this dispute is ongoing, we have no further comments at this time. ”
Siemens did not respond to a request for comment.
Case tracking until May 2019
GE in the lawsuit claims that the theft dates back to May 2019. Both GE and Siemens were competing to provide gas turbine equipment and services to Dominion Energy, a Virginia-based concessionaire. The suit alleges that, during the bidding process, a senior Dominion employee began to send confidential business information that GE had submitted in its proposal to a Siemens account manager. The suit alleges that the information included Dominion’s analysis of all bids for the project.
The suit alleges that the recipient of GE’s trade secrets by Siemens passed the information on to colleagues, including those preparing the offer for the Dominion project. The suit says the information helped Siemens win the contract.
The process says: “GE presented a bidding package to Dominion that contained GE’s confidential trade secrets about four separate gas turbine models, including information on the technical specifications for these turbine models, the price structure for different combinations of turbine units and the proprietary processes by which GE would maintain and maintain these turbine models [collectively, GE’s ‘Trade Secrets’]. ”
‘Plan’ to win the contract
GE claims that the documents provided by a Dominion employee to a Siemens account manager provided Siemens with a “plan” to win the contract for the “Peakers Project” in Danville, Virginia. He also claims that these actions helped Siemens adapt “its unit specifications and prices to compete more effectively against GE, while GE and other competitors remained in the dark”.
The lawsuit also alleges that Siemens used trade secrets in part to win contracts as part of an effort to raise the price of the initial public offering of Siemens Energy’s shares in September 2020, after the energy business was split off from its parent company. Siemens AG.
The lawsuit says that the Dominion employee, no longer employed by the utility, passed the information to the Siemens manager at least half a dozen times, including forwarding his personal email address to that of the Siemens manager’s wife. The lawsuit states that the Siemens account manager remains employed by the company.
The GE lawsuit says that Siemens only alerted GE about undue receipt of trade secrets 16 months later, in September 2020. GE described the notification as a “nothing to see here, folks” letter, according to the process . GE in the lawsuit says that Siemens’ letter came after Siemens completed its internal investigation and Dominion completed its own investigation. The lawsuit says Dominion alerted GE to the alleged illegality before Siemens.
GE asked Siemens to stop using the allegedly stolen material and pay damages in total of hundreds of millions of dollars or more. The lawsuit claims that Siemens “vehemently refused” to assure GE that the documents containing the trade secrets were destroyed.
Competitive Disadvantage
GE in the lawsuit said the alleged theft put the company at a competitive disadvantage for future contracts valued at $ 120 million each, or more. The suit also says that a resolution is needed quickly, as companies are competing in another bid, scheduled for January 19, for a Dominion project.
Siemens and GE have already fought patent infringement cases, including last fall, when Siemens Gamesa, in late September, filed a patent infringement complaint against GE Renewable Energy in the United States District Court for the District Florida medium.
Siemens Gamesa in the complaint alleged that GE’s Haliade-X offshore wind turbine infringes Siemens Gamesa’s Direct Drive offshore technology patents.
–Darrell Proctor is an associate editor of POWER (@POWERmagazine) POWER sSonal Patel, associate editor at Enior, contributed to this report.