It is a corporate rule that you can tell how lucrative and innovative a sector is by the number of lawsuits that fly back and forth between the leading players. For years barely a month has passed in the IT industry without one of the top companies filing a patent infringement of one form or another against one of its rivals.
But now, in a further sign of the growing maturity and commercial importance of the wind energy industry, a legal spat between two of the world's leading turbine manufacturers is threatening to escalate into all-out war after Mitsubishi filed a counter suit against General Electric (GE) in response to the US conglomerate's accusations that it had infringed on its patents.
Mitsubishi yesterday filed an antitrust lawsuit at a federal court in Arkansas near where the Japanese engineering giant plans to build a $100m (£69m) wind turbine plant, accusing GE of making "baseless" claims of patent infringement against its rival and using the court case to monopolise parts of the burgeoning wind turbine market.
It also filed a separate suit in a Florida court alleging that GE has infringed on a Mitsubishi patent.
The antitrust action alleges GE has engaged in an "unlawful scheme" designed to cripple its competitors ever since it entered the market for variable-speed wind turbines back in 2006.
It added that GE's filing of two patent infringements against Mitsubishi had a direct impact on the company's standing in the US, helping GE to secure a 70 per cent share of the market. "Prior to the initiation of GE's first lawsuit against Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi had sales of approximately $2bn a year of variable-speed wind turbines in the United States," sates the complaint. "Since GE's litigation campaign began over two years ago, Mitsubishi has not sold a single variable-speed wind turbine in the United States."
"GE is attempting to kill competition in the marketplace to the detriment of US consumers," Mitsubishi spokeswoman Sonia Williams told the New York Times. "We anticipate damages will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and may be over $1bn."
GE hit back at the allegations in a statement, branding Mitsubishi's lawsuit as "meritless and outrageous". It added that it stood by its original patent infringement claims and confirmed that it intended to "vigorously defend itself " against Mitsubishi's charges.
The row dates back to 2008 when GE filed two patent infringement claims against Mitsubishi relating to grid connection and turbine frame technologies.
In January this year, the US International Trade Commission concluded that Mitsubishi had not violated the patents, but GE responded a month later by filing a suit in a federal court in Dallas again accusing Mitsubishi of breaching its patents.