Federal Appeals Court Reduces Hytera Payment to Motorola Solutions, Permanent-Injunction Consideration

Hytera Communications will see the copyright damages it owes Motorola Solutions reduced “substantially,” but the China-based LMR manufacturer still will have to pay more than $400 million and face the possibility of a permanent injunction being imposed on it, according to a recent U.S. appeals-court ruling.

With the appeals-court decision, these portions of the civil case against Hytera—initially filed in 2017, claiming that Hytera built its DMR radios with trade secrets and copyrighted software stolen from Motorola—will be reconsidered by a U.S. district court. In addition, the appeals-court order affirmed the district court’s decision that Hytera Communications owes Motorola Solutions at least $407.4 million—$135.8 million in compensatory damages and $271.6 million in punitive damages.

But the opinion written by 7th Circuit Judge David Hamilton calls on the district court to recalculate the $136.3 million in copyright damages, noting that the amount “will need to be reduced substantially.”

This reduction will be based on the fact that the copyright damages should only be based on Hytera sales within the U.S., as opposed to the worldwide sales figures that were used by the district court, according to Hamilton’s opinion. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Norgle—now retired—used the Hytera worldwide sales numbers, because Motorola Solutions argued that the DMR software code was downloaded from a U.S.-based server in Illinois.

But the appeals court disagreed, noting that Motorola Solutions failed to prove that the stolen software code was downloaded from a U.S. server, as company servers in Malaysia are believed to be the ones utilized....