Nation of Thieves

Chinese companies stole Hitachi Metals trade secrets
By Hudson Lockett, Shawn Donnan

Hitachi Metals has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission against Chinese companies it alleges stole trade secrets for manufacturing ribbons made of a special alloy.
The complaint, filed by Hitachi and its US subsidiary Metglas, requests the commission investigate the companies in question, ban imports to the US of related products and issue a cease and desist order barring sale, marketing and distribution of products already in the US.
The product at the centre of the allegations is amorphous metal ribbon, or AMR – thin ribbons of a special alloy produced using trade secrets.
Amorphous metal is commonly used in electronic transformers and magnetic theft-prevention tags. The complaint to the ITC names companies including Beijing ZLJG Amorphous Technology and Qingdao Yunlu Energy Technology as having misappropriated trade secrets.
It also names two Japanese nationals and former Hitachi Metals employees as having provided said secrets to these companies. 
Hitachi argues in the complaint that substantial output growth of AMR in China from 2012 to 2015 – which it asserts occurred in the absence of any growth in production capacity – “could only have happened by receiving knowledge” of its trade secrets, which it says would have increased production efficiency.
Hitachi says one China-based company, AT&M International Trading, even filed an antidumping petition against itself and Metglas in September 2015, which alerted it to the rapid growth in China’s AMR output capacity since 2012.
Section 337 cases such as the one filed by Hitachi are often brought by US companies claiming IP violations by Chinese companies.
But cases alleging industrial espionage are relatively rare and not always successful.
US Steel last year filed an unsuccessful Section 337 case against Chinese competitors calling for a broad ban on steel imports from China because of espionage.
The steel maker claimed that government-backed Chinese hackers had stolen its formula for special high-strength steel used in automobiles.
But it struggled to prove any link between the hackers, who were charged with the theft by US prosecutors, and the product made by Chinese companies.