The United States' global hegemony is the result of sanctions issued everywhere in the world. （bushi）
Some time ago, the United States sent an anti-monopoly lawsuit to Apple, and at that time, netizens were still gossiping about the "crazy" that everyone in the United States was cutting, and when they turned their heads, they found that the United States "cut" itself and said that it was just playing, and it really had to be China.
On April 7, Hytera, which is listed on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, issued an announcement on its official website:
Source: Hytera's official website
What the onlookers were watching was a lawsuit full of heads: Wait a minute, why does the US court's decree govern China's listed companies? Also, are you really the world's policeman in the United States? Why do you demand a global ban on sales?
Don't worry, let's take our time.
The 7-year lawsuit between the Chinese and American walkie-talkie leaders
Dark Horse first introduces the two protagonists of this incident: Hytera and Motorola.
Hytera is the largest professional wireless communication equipment company in China, and its main product is walkie-talkie, which is not the ordinary civilian kind, but is a professional walkie-talkie used in public security, national defense and fire protection.
In the walkie-talkie market, the world's largest brand is called Motorola, which is the mobile phone brand that was very popular at that time - in 2011, Motorola was split into Motorola Mobile and Motorola Solutions, the former was acquired by Google for $12.5 billion.
Source: Internet
And the remaining Motorola plan (hereinafter referred to as "Motorola") inherited the last mantle of the former giant.
Don't underestimate these "mantles", as the saying goes, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse. Moreover, Motorola has a large number of wireless communication technology patents, and Motorola is currently involved in the formulation of major professional wireless communication technology standards in the world.
In general, Motorola is the kind of big patent owner who does nothing every year and can be soft just by collecting patent fees.
Coincidentally, a large part of Hytera's products are professional wireless communication equipment, and in the global walkie-talkie market in 2022, Hytera only accounts for 4% of the market share, while in the professional walkie-talkie market, Hytera's global market share can reach 25%.
Source: Head Leopard Research Institute
Professionalism means technical barriers, high value-added and patent research and development, either pay protection fees and patent fees to the industry brother and be stuck obediently, or engage in technology research and development by themselves, but a careless may cause sky-high international lawsuits.
For example, our Hytera.
On March 15, 2017, Hytera received a complaint served in the U.S. court in Illinois, where Motorola sued Hytera for infringement of its trade secrets.
Real business competition is often unpretentious, and one of the Motorola allegations is:
In terms of follow-up, Hytera admitted that it had hired the employee, but claimed that 75% of the R&D had been completed before the hire. (But it doesn't say that the remaining 25% is completely self-developed)
PS: During that time, it was also exposed that many Chinese people stole American trade secrets, and Apple, General Electric, and ADI were all involved.
Later, Motorola also added a lawsuit, arguing that Hytera illegally copied Motorola's source code into its own products. (emphasis added)
Of course, in the face of the accusations, Hytera has always emphasized that I am not that I have not, and has constantly appealed, but to no avail:
In 2020, the court ruled that Hytera should pay Motorola $765 million in compensation, which is about twice the total net profit of Hytera over the past 10 years. (Dark Horse OS: Is it possible to get rich in a lawsuit?)
Hytera was reduced to $543 million a year later, with a huge compensation of $765 million reduced to $543 million;
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice began to dig through old accounts again, announcing a criminal case against Hytera, accusing it of stealing proprietary business data of U.S. walkie-talkies. (It's the commercial espionage accused by Motorola before)
Hytera H series products
In order to circumvent the ban on the sale of infringing products, Hytera also launched the H series products, but Motorola did not recognize the independent property rights of the H series.
During this period, Hytera also sued Motorola for monopolizing the market in Beijing, which was also dismissed, and all lawsuits in Australia and Europe ended in defeat. (It seems that Hytera probably does learn from a lot of advanced experience in the industry)
When the time came to 2023, Hytera began to compromise and paid a license fee to the account supervised by the court, but at the same time, Hytera also said in its financial report that it "has filed an appeal".
Source: Hytera's 2023 third quarter report
The appeal is real, and it has been on for a long time.
In 2022, Hytera filed a lawsuit with the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, demanding a declaration that the H series products did not infringe Motorola's copyright.
Herein lies the problem when Hytera filed the lawsuit in 2022 while it was still in the process of being adjudicated by a U.S. court, when Hytera concealed its repeated appeals, and the case was not sent to Motorola until November 2023.
This is considered illegal in the U.S. judicial process.
The U.S. argued that Hytera had initiated parallel proceedings in other jurisdictions despite the district court's thorough pre-trial investigation, which was a "contempt motion" and demanded that Hytera withdraw its lawsuit in Shenzhen.
Otherwise, Hytera would not be able to sell any product containing walkie-talkie technology anywhere in the world and would not be able to rely on Chinese court orders and judgments, otherwise it would face a daily fine of up to US$1 million.
Hytera also has no head, and Lightspeed withdrew the lawsuit, and at the same time removed the products from various sales channels (Dark Horse went to see it, and it was very clean), and is currently waiting for the United States to revoke the order.
At present, screenshots of Hytera's Tmall and JD.com stores
How to say it, I understand the truth, and those who know the times are Junjie, but this sliding speed still makes the dark horse a little breathtaking.
So let's go back to the original question: why can the United States impose a global ban on Hytera? and still make Hytera so obedient?
In fact, the fundamental reason is that nearly half of Hytera's revenue comes from the U.S. market, and the infringement in the first-instance judgment does exist, so Hytera does not have many cards in its hand.
Of course, there are also reasons such as the compliance review of the H series, which is likely to be extended again due to the "contempt of court" and the extreme disadvantage to Hytera, so I will not expand much here.
Source: Enterprise Patent Watch
Anyway, to sum up, Hytera was caught with pigtails in the first place, and its own special dependence on the U.S. market, which led to a particularly unconfident attempt to seek domestic legal asylum in the future.
But if you want to say that the United States is pointing fingers from the moral high ground this time, that's not true.
The abacus beads collapsed on the face
Do you still remember the H series products that Hytera made in order to circumvent the ban?
Motorola didn't recognize Hytera's H series as self-developed, so the United States gave a move:
Good guys, for a long time, the feelings are coming to the source code.
In fact, as a case law country in the United States, some companies will take the initiative to apply for discovery at the prosecution stage, and the defendant company will be required by the court to provide source code at this stage.
The U.S. believes that Chinese brands voluntarily enter the U.S. market and must abide by U.S. rules
For example, when Xpeng Motors released a new car with L3 autonomous driving function in 2020, Tesla submitted an application to the court to require Xpeng to disclose all the source code;
In July last year, the U.S. court required DJI to provide Textron with the source code involved in the intellectual property lawsuit, and the U.S. court required DJI to provide Textron with the source code involved in the case;
Even when TikTok was censored by the U.S. authorities on the grounds of information security, it had to open its source code to Oracle.
Source: Internet
And even if this behavior is said to be legal and compliant, it is essentially a tool for the state game.
Otherwise, why did the United States rush to impose such an extreme sentence? In fact, it was to get Hytera to withdraw the indictment in the Shenzhen case as soon as possible. After all, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court asked Motorola to also show the source code as evidence, and the United States is worried about the leakage of its own trade secrets.
It is important to know that Motorola's patent litigation in China has a 90% success rate, and the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court has also issued a protection order to keep the information of the parties confidential. But, Motorola doesn't believe it...... (shrugs .jpg)
But having said that, the U.S. judiciary is still quite rigorous, and the matter is so big that the U.S. court has not yet reached a conclusion on whether the H series products are infringing, and this global ban is also a raft with the "contempt of court motion", and the review cycle has been repeatedly extended.
But what is clear is that now Chinese companies go to sea, but all those who have some achievements are stared at by the United States, and a little luck can reap a period of disputes that will last for several years.
It's really embarrassing.
The anti-hegemony of Chinese enterprises depends on hard power
But as Ren Zhengfei said, as long as Chinese companies continue to develop and progress, sooner or later they will compete with the United States, in the face of such a behemoth, as well as the market affected by political factors, Chinese companies must prepare in advance and take precautions.
For example, DJI will be included in the chip export blacklist by the United States in 2022, but DJI itself has more than 5,000 industry-related patents, and it has begun to engage in supply chain autonomy again, and it has not been stuck at all.
Source: Internet
With the high quality and cost-effectiveness of its products, DJI even occupies more than 70% of the market share of the consumer drone market in the United States.
In 2023, Textron, a U.S. military drone company, accused DJI of infringing products, but DJI directly said that its products used related technology in 2009, three years before Textron applied for a patent.
Different from the details of the pull, DJI directly refuted the result of the "nearly $300 million in compensation" awarded by the US court:
After that, DJI continued to sell products in the United States, and in the face of the United States' tariff increases, DJI directly raised prices to pass on the cost to American consumers, and as a result, it sold better.
If Chinese companies want to break through the hegemonic blockade, hard power is the greatest confidence.
Because the market will teach everyone what the truth is.