Ansaldo-Siemens dispute is settled in Ansaldo’s favour

8 August 2016


On 29 July an International Chamber of Commerce Arbitral Tribunal issued a final award confirming that Ansaldo Energia (AEN) has unlimited rights to use Siemens technology for heavy duty gas turbines.
The ICC’s decision is seen by AEN as a landmark decision for the heavy duty gas turbine market, as it will preserve more innovation and competitiveness in the global market for a technology that is important in meeting climate change goals. It notably strengthens AEN’s worldwide position in such market and ‘dwarfs Siemens’ efforts to limit further strong competition by AEN’.
The dispute was about the Siemens heavy gas turbines technology which Siemens had licensed to AEN under an agreement running until October 2004. Thereafter the parties had agreed that AEN could continue to use and improve such Siemens technology ‘without any future limitation’. But when in May 2014 AEN announced its co-operation agreements with Shanghai Electric Group (China) and Doosan Heavy Industries (South Korea) to enter the most relevant Asian markets and thereafter distribute innovative gas turbines worldwide, Siemens claimed that it could immediately terminate all of AEN’s rights to use its technology and started arbitration proceedings. Siemens stated that if the Arbitral Tribunal did prevent AEN’s co-operation activities, these activities would destroy substantial parts of Siemens’ gas turbine business. Siemens also stated that AEN’s technical co-operation with its Asian partner would seriously and irreparably harm Siemens’ position in the market.
However the ICC Arbitral Tribunal (composed of German and Swiss legal reprsentatives) dismissed all Siemens’ claims and expressly stated that AEN is free to use the formerly licensed Siemens technology worldwide without any limitations and to freely sub-license such technology to third parties including the right to sub-license the relevant patents. The Arbitral Tribunal ordered Siemens to pay AEN US$490 000 in arbitration costs plus €2 584 860.51 in party costs. In addition, the Arbitral Tribunal also made clear that AEN would be free to start new arbitral proceedings against Siemens if it turned out that Siemens wrongly informed third parties about AEN’s rights and thereby caused damage to AEN.



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