The Shape of a Potential Settlement Is Emerging in a Knockdown Battery Dispute
In one scenario, SK Innovation would pay big compensation to LG
Administrative judges in Washington, D.C., were flabbergasted last month when they studied an arcane trade secrets case. Amid high stakes — blood rivalry between two of the leading companies in one of the world’s most important new technologies — South Korea’s SK Innovation had concealed reams of evidence when accused of stealing the know-how behind its newest battery. Meanwhile, SK workers were irretrievably destroying pertinent files, emails, and other documents. By the time their existence was known, the documents were gone.
Now, in a public version of its decision released yesterday, the International Trade Commission (ITC) paints a damning portrait of SK, which, faced with the potential loss of tens of billions of dollars in business, set out to erase the record and mislead the court as to what it was doing. “It was not enough for SK to destroy or hide its records once, because SK then, unchastened, collected more LG proprietary information, only to destroy or hide those records as well,” the judges said.
The case involves a battery aimed for two of the leading new electric vehicles of the next couple of years — the Volkswagen ID.4 crossover SUV and…
