General Electric (GE) has filed suit seeking major monetary damages from Siemens Energy in a Virginia federal court, alleging “willful and malicious misappropriation of GE trade secrets” as they competed to be suppliers to Dominion Energy Virginia. Dominion is not a named defendant, but an employee (reportedly now gone) is accused of sharing GE’s data with Siemens.
A copy of the petition is here, posted by Powermag.com in one of the many trade publication stories about the dispute. Here is one from Reuters and another from Barron’s, which has a paywall. General Electric is represented by the Richmond law firm Spotts Fain, P.C.
All Dominion ratepayers have a stake in assuring that the coming gigantic capital projects we will spend the rest of our lives paying for are built for at prices set by competition, not by insider dealing. On this, stockholder and ratepayer interests should align.
The allegation is that a senior Dominion employee – named in the pleading — provided GE confidential proprietary bid information to Siemens, giving Siemens a major advantage as it competed over a series of requests for natural gas generation proposals, contacts GE did not win. Continue reading