According to the New York Times, Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei has filed a lawsuit against long time partner Motorola. With this lawsuit the company hopes to prevent the completion of the sale by Motorola of its wireless network division to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

 

In July of last year NSN and Motorola announced that the two companies entered into an agreement that will see NSN purchasing the majority of Motorola’s wireless network infrastructure assets for $1.2 billion (over R9 billion) in cash.

 

Huawei filed the suit this week in the US District Court in Illinois, stating that although it has no issue with Motorola selling its wireless network division to NSN, its concern was that certain of the equipment and technology that Motorola was selling included technologies that was developed by Huawei. The sale of the latter would, according to company, then lead to copyright infringement as well as breach of contract.

 

Motorola has responded in a statement that Huawei’s lawsuit was without merit and that it will be completing this sale to NSN within early 2011, following the approval from the Chinese antitrust authorities.