Motorola has raised a lawsuit against the Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei in the United States, accusing the Chinese company of trade secret theft.

Motorola claimed that during a certain period in the 1990s, many of its former employees offered detailed information about Motorola's networking structure technologies, including seamless mobile solutions, to Huawei.

In an initial suit, filed in 2008, Motorola sued five of its former workers for allegedly sharing trade secrets with Lemko, which was also named in this suit and has a reseller agreement with Huawei. Motorola stated in its latest litigation that an engineer shared information about Motorola's technologies with Huawei's founder, Ren Zhengfei. The engineer had reportedly worked for Motorola for about ten years and he resigned in April 2004, before joining Lemko as chief technology officer.

Faye Vorick, vice president for marketing of Lemko, denied the accusation from Motorola and said that many of the defendants had left Motorola long before joining Lemko.

In response to the accusation, Huawei has published a report and denied all legal charges related to the trade secret theft.