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Why would T-Mobile still give one seat to Huawei US engineer for testing after knowing the company is trying to steal the trade secret...?

andrenotgiant 8y ago
My bet: good old one-to-one professional relationships
Bartweiss 8y ago
People elsewhere in the the comments pointed out that Tappy seems to be a derivative of the open source Tapster robot. So I suppose it's possible that T-Mobile (or at least the people overseeing the Tappy lab) simply didn't care very much. They might have objected to photos and long lists of questions to avoid letting Huawei crib all the challenging parts of their upgrades, but not have been particularly concerned with whether people saw the basic functioning of the thing, even knowing they wanted to copy it. Now, a very cynical idea is that T-Mobile figured Tappy wasn't expensive to replicate regardless, so the maximum profit lay in indulging Huawei's decision to commit a trade secrets violation. That would explain giving Huawei continued access while refusing to answer questions and installing good-faith safeguards in the lab. There's some circumstantial evidence which could back this: T-Mobile apparently considered licensing out Tappy, which is what started the lab-access program at issue here. And TMO did sue Huawei for "reasonable royalties" on Tappy plus double that in punitive damages, though all they got were breach of contract damages. If they suspected that Huawei wouldn't buy an expensive license and could replicate Tappy without espionage cheaply, then a shot at triple royalties might have sounded like a winning outcome. I don't believe that's true here. It'd require probably-illegal coordination to get T-Mobile staff on the same page, all in the interest of fighting a lengthy trial to maybe receive damages which would be tough to sustain on appeal and collect. But laches defenses exist for a reason, and a strategic delay to collect larger damages is at least an interesting possibility to consider.

andrenotgiant 8y ago

My bet: good old one-to-one professional relationships

Bartweiss 8y ago

People elsewhere in the the comments pointed out that Tappy seems to be a derivative of the open source Tapster robot. So I suppose it's possible that T-Mobile (or at least the people overseeing the Tappy lab) simply didn't care very much. They might have objected to photos and long lists of questions to avoid letting Huawei crib all the challenging parts of their upgrades, but not have been particularly concerned with whether people saw the basic functioning of the thing, even knowing they wanted to copy it. Now, a very cynical idea is that T-Mobile figured Tappy wasn't expensive to replicate regardless, so the maximum profit lay in indulging Huawei's decision to commit a trade secrets violation. That would explain giving Huawei continued access while refusing to answer questions and installing good-faith safeguards in the lab. There's some circumstantial evidence which could back this: T-Mobile apparently considered licensing out Tappy, which is what started the lab-access program at issue here. And TMO did sue Huawei for "reasonable royalties" on Tappy plus double that in punitive damages, though all they got were breach of contract damages. If they suspected that Huawei wouldn't buy an expensive license and could replicate Tappy without espionage cheaply, then a shot at triple royalties might have sounded like a winning outcome. I don't believe that's true here. It'd require probably-illegal coordination to get T-Mobile staff on the same page, all in the interest of fighting a lengthy trial to maybe receive damages which would be tough to sustain on appeal and collect. But laches defenses exist for a reason, and a strategic delay to collect larger damages is at least an interesting possibility to consider.