Sany determined in lawsuit against Obama
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E-mail Xinhua, March 4, 2013
A spokesman for China's Sany Group stressed on Sunday that the company is determined in its judiciary procedure against U.S. President Barack Obama.
Sany will persist in the lawsuit to the end and will appeal to the circuit court or the supreme court of the United States if necessary, the group's media official Yang Jian told Xinhua.
Yang said initial results had been achieved in the case in which the company's U.S.-based subsidiary Ralls Corp. last year filed a complaint against Obama and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for blocking its owning of four wind farms in Oregon.
According to a court order, Count IV of the amended complaint will not be dismissed. It alleges that the president's "order regarding the acquisition of four U.S. wind farm project companies by Ralls Corporation" on Sept. 28, 2012 violates the due process clause of the fifth amendment to the United States Constitution by depriving Ralls of property without providing adequate opportunity to be heard or an adequate explanation of the reasons for the decision.
The ruling, which dismissed other counts of the complaint, said the plaintiff's opposition will be due before March 28 and defendants' reply will be due before April 4.
Sany is China's largest machinery manufacturer.
Xiang Wenbo, president of Sany Heavy Industry Co., said on Saturday that the case will have a "positive influence" on Sany's future overseas mergers and acquisitions.
Sany's lawsuit seemed just to have a 20 percent possibility of success, but was a 100 percent victory, said Hao Junbo, a multinational litigation and claim expert.
The case was an important breakthrough for Chinese enterprises to win international say, according to Zhang Guoqing, a professor in American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Chinese companies used to be reluctant to protect their own interests in case of facing unfair treatment in the United States, the efforts of Sany set a good example in using the laws of foreign countries, said Zhang.
As more Chinese companies invest abroad, they face growing frictions involving intellectual property rights (IPR) or protectionism. Some succeeded in protecting themselves by judiciary means.
Aokang Group Co., Ltd, China's leading shoemaker, won a lawsuit against European Union anti-dumping measures on Chinese leather shoes in November last year. Aokang was one of the five involved shoemakers, but the only firm who decided to go through the appeal process after their first lawsuit was objected in 2010.
In another case, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. won a lawsuit against Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in a U.S. court in 2011, which a U.S. court prohibited Motorola from selling any confidential data from Huawei to NSN.
On Jan. 31 this year, the U.S. International Trade Commission initiated a Section-337 investigation into wireless devices from Huawei and another Chinese IT company ZTE, along with two others based in South Korea and Finland, on the grounds of patent infringement.
Last October, U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee issued a groundless report alleging that Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE posed a possible threat to U.S. national security and recommended that regulators block Huawei and ZTE from acquiring U.S. companies.
"Intellectual property right is a private right, and we oppose its politicization," State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) commissioner Tian Lipu said Sunday.
Tian said "Public policies should take into account social impacts. When intellectual property disputes arise, we should appeal to legal and judicial means and allow businesses to solve the disputes by themselves.
Gao Xiaomei, an IPR expert, said companies should be more active in protecting IPR and other interests overseas in line with local laws.
On the basis of effective mechanisms and measures, Chinese companies should learn to make full use of languages and logics of developed countries to refute allegations with hard evidence, she added.
Meanwhile, the establishment of special administrative bodies should be considered to study IPR violations and protectionism in developed countries and offer aid to Chinese firms with overseas investment, the expert said.
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