AMSC has announced that its appeal to China's Supreme People's Court has been accepted.
AMSC's appeal relates to the Hainan Higher Court's decision to uphold the Hainan Province No. 1 Intermediate People's Court's dismissal of AMSC's civil case against Sinovel Wind Group Co. Ltd. and Dalian Guotong Electric Co. Ltd. (Guotong).
This is the smallest of four legal actions that AMSC has brought against Sinovel. In total, AMSC is seeking to recover from Sinovel more than $1.2 billion for contracted shipments and damages in these cases that stem from Sinovel's alleged contractual breaches and AMSC's discovery of alleged intellectual property theft by Sinovel employees.
AMSC says its rationale for the appeal includes the following:
The company says the Hainan case is purely a copyright-infringement dispute rather than a contractual matter. As such, it should be independent of the contracts and belongs within the civil court system.
The Beijing No.1 Intermediate Court stated that the software copyright-infringement dispute between AMSC and Sinovel is not a dispute “arising from, or in connection with the execution of the contract” and should not be sent to an arbitration institution. Therefore, the jurisdiction opposition raised by Sinovel lacks factual and legal basis and is inadmissible, according to AMSC.
As there is no contractual relationship between AMSC and Guotong, it is impossible to solve the dispute between AMSC and Guotong through arbitration. Moreover, because Sinovel and Guotong are co-defendants, it is impossible to separate them so that they would be governed by a court and arbitration commission, respectively, according to AMSC.
