General Electric Co. and Siemens Energy AG agreed to settle the lawsuit filed by GE earlier this year. In January, GE charged the Siemens AG spin-off with using illicitly obtained GE trade secrets to win orders for industrial gas turbines totaling more than $1 billion. Now, in a federal court filing, GE and Siemens Energy revealed they have a binding settlement agreement over the case.
The terms of the settlement have not been announced, and neither business has commented on the settlement.
Also, a federal court judge in Richmond, Va., dismissed GE’s original suit.
Siemens Energy is the former Siemens AG business unit reestablished as an independent company in September 2020.
GE’s case alleged that in May 2019 a senior employee of Dominion Energy – a Virginia-based electric utility – sent to Siemens AG confidential information about GE turbine systems, including cost and performance data for four different gas turbine models, as well as proposals for service and maintenance. GE had provided that information as part of its bid for a contract awarded to Siemens in July 2019.
The same employee, GE contended, also provided Siemens with Dominion’s evaluation of all the bids received for the business. GE’s suit contended that this gave Siemens a pattern which it followed to win up to $340 million in business from Dominion.
In its suit General Electric requested the court to block Siemens from using the information in question, and to pay damages totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.