Spelling mistakes and video show CNEX Labs stole Huawei trade secrets

Previously, in 2017, Huawei sued former employee Ronnie "YiRen" Huang and his startup CNEX Labs for stealing Huawei's trade secrets.

Today (5), according to Reuters, Huawei's lawyers told a Texas jury on Tuesday that "a former engineering manager used Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.'s trade secrets and lured 24 of its employees to improperly establish his startup company."

The trade secrets trial has become a flashpoint in the U.S. government's allegations that Huawei's equipment poses a threat to U.S. security, with Huawei lawyers telling jurors that spelling errors in its internal documents were repeated in past proposals by former managers.

Huawei is suing former manager Huang Yiren and his startup CNEX Labs for at least $85.7m (£67m) in damages and rights over memory control technology.

Huang Yiren, who has countersued Huawei and denied the company's allegations, is scheduled to testify on Tuesday (local time).

In addition to showing jurors common spelling mistakes in the documents, Huawei lawyer Michael Weckler played an excerpt from a video ad in which another former employee admitted to copying 5,760 files from his work computer before leaving Huawei to join CNEX.

"Think of spelling mistakes as DNA," Wexler told an eight-member jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in his opening statement. "Stealing technology is wrong."

But CNEX lawyers rejected the allegations and said the spelling mistakes were the same because the same person, Huang Yiren, wrote all the documents. CNEX lawyer Deron Dacus said neither Huang Yiren nor CNEX asked for or knew that the copied documents for its recruits were mostly personal information.

"The things Huawei claims are trade secrets are not so," Dacus said in his opening statement, describing the lawsuit as "bullying and intimidation."

CNEX develops chips that speed up data storage on cloud computing networks. CNEX and Huang Yiren's countersuit seeks $24.5 million in damages from Huawei for development delays and loss of future revenue.

Huang founded CNEX in 2013 and has raised more than $100 million from backers including Dell Technologies and Microsoft.

The trial has put Huawei in the spotlight due to the U.S. government's blacklisting of its telecom equipment and pressure from U.S. allies not to buy its equipment.