back to article T-Mobile US lobs sueball at Huawei: Claims Chinese giant stole robot tech

T-Mobile US has filed a suit accusing Huawei of stealing the tech behind its mobile phone testing robot, nicknamed “Tappy”. The carrier claims that Huawei employees, who were authorised to to use the robot for testing, allegedly stole the software and specs for the ‘bot, including illicit photos of the machine at work, to help …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Subcontractors

    I feel no pity for them.

    If you subcontract just on price, this, whille illegal, is to be expected.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's almost as if................

      they expected them to do this, so setup camera's to catch them in the act to give enough evidence to launch a massive legal case.

    2. NoneSuch Silver badge

      Re: Subcontractors

      Laws are only obeyed by honest men.

  2. Neil 8

    "T-Mobile was forced to cancel planned Huawei handset purchases"...

    ... Because now (after stolen-robo-testing) they'd be more reliable for T-Mobile's customers?

    1. Raumkraut

      I expect it was because they didn't want to continue doing business with (allegedly) contract-breaching thieves.

      This isn't the public sector, you know.

  3. Richard_L
    Unhappy

    Having misread the headline as "Chinese stole giant robot tech", I was rather disappointed by the puny little machine described in the article...

  4. DropBear
    WTF?

    The whole "I'll let you work with it but you must promise not to make use of what you'll see" angle sound rather daft - filming the thing is somewhat redundant if you let people see it at all. WTF, you don't just authorize people you fear might compete with you to work hands-on with your allegedly closely guarded secret! Or is this about "but you promised!"...? Not very nice of Huawei if true of course, but come on...

    1. RaidOne

      @DropBear

      NDAs are very common. T-Mobile did the right thing in this case - they let Huawei use T-Mobile technology to test phones on the T-Mobile network, expecting Huawei to not steal the technology. Well, it seems that their expectations were too high :)

  5. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Would be terrible

    I wonder if Huawei had small devices with cameras to spy with... oh wait...

  6. Jeffrey Nonken

    Assuming T-Mobile isn't outright lying, it seems pretty cut and dried to me: Huawei signed a contract and then violated the contract. Companies allow others to rent their equipment all the time without expecting the renters to steal the parts and make off with the technology, and nobody considers it remarkable, and NDAs are pretty common. I've signed a few myself.

    Noise about "they must have expected something because they put cameras up" is a red herring; when most companies put security cameras on expensive equipment people don't call it "entrapment", they call it "insurance premium reduction."

    Part 2 is a bit less simple: how much should Huawei pay for this breach of contract? T-Mobile is naturally going to high-ball the number in the hopes that it doesn't get whittled down to nothing. It's up to the courts to come up with a final figure, right after they decide if there was a contract breach in the first place. It's what they're for, after all.

    My only connection to T-Mobile is as a formerly loyal customer, now a pissed off ex-customer.

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