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| SK headquarters in Seorin-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, where SK Innovation is located. 2021.2.11/News1 © News1 Reporter Park Jung-ho |
The US Governor of Georgia has requested US President Joe Biden to overturn the ruling on SK Innovation, Reuters reported on the 12th (local time).
Governor Brian Kemp insisted on the day that “the ruling will damage the factories of electric vehicle battery manufacturers under construction in the southern state.”
Governor Kemp’s request came two days after the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) admitted that SK Innovation had stolen trade secrets related to electric vehicle battery technology.
Accordingly, President Biden will decide to cite or reject the ITC ruling within the next 60 days.
If President Biden accepts the ITC ruling, SK Innovation will be unable to manufacture and sell in the United States for the next 10 years. If rejected, the ITC’s ruling will be meaningless.
LG Energy Solutions won the’battery war’ that lasted for two years from 2019.
On the 11th, ITC infringed on the trade secrets of LG Energy Solutions in the final judgment of the LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation’s battery trade secret infringement lawsuit. I ordered a ban on my imports.
This is longer than the initial sanction period proposed by the ITC’s Unfair Import Investigation Bureau (OUII). Last year, OUII requested an early decision to defeat SK Innovation, which is subject to destruction of evidence, and issued an opinion that the import, sale, and distribution of SK batteries in the US should be banned for more than five years.
It is evaluated that it is somewhat unexpected that ITC has extended the sanction period to 10 years while maintaining the decision to lose early as requested by OUII.
The ITC’s decision was widely infringed on trade secrets by SK, and it seems that LG’s claim that it is a technology that can only be obtained through long-term research and development, even considering the rapid technological development speed of the battery industry.