After spending five years in and out of court, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) says it and GE have amicably settled and dropped all legal actions taken by both parties in the U.S. regarding alleged infringements of their patents on wind turbines.
In 2008, GE brought a case against MHI before the U.S. International Trade Commission charging that MHI's 2.4 MW variable-speed wind turbines violated two of GE's U.S. patents and thus constituted infringement. Subsequently, GE and MHI both instituted several legal proceedings against the other. (For more information on the lawsuits, click here.)
MHI says it and GE have agreed to settle all their legal disputes concerning wind turbines and auxiliary matters, through a cross-licensing agreement, in which the two companies grant the use of their subjected intellectual property to each other while retaining their own patents.
Under the terms of the agreement, the companies have also agreed not to make public the specific content of their settlement. However, MHI notes that the settlement will have a negligible impact on its fiscal-year 2013 earnings.
