T-Mobile is suing Huawei for allegedly stealing information on its robot

T-Mobile USA claims Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies stole its software, specifications and other secrets for a cellphone-testing robot nicknamed “Tappy” — and it’s not happy. In a lawsuit filed Sept. 2 in federal court in Seattle, T-Mobile says employees of the world’s third-largest mobile-phone supplier illicitly photographed the device, tried to smuggle components out of T-Mobile’s Bellevue lab, and — when banned from the facility — tried to sneak back in. Huawei, which is no longer a T-Mobile phone supplier, utilized the information to build its own testing robot, and now is “using T-Mobile’s stolen robot technology to test non-T-Mobile handsets and improve return rates for handsets developed and sold to other carriers,” says the suit. A Huawei spokesman acknowledged some inappropriate actions by two company employees and said they’d been fired. Huawei rejects the broader claims in the suit, however. T-Mobile claims that in 2007 it was the first to debut a robot to test cellphone handsets “by performing touches on the phone the same way a human being would – only much more frequently in a shorter period of time.” By reducing the cost of testing and improving the diagnostic data, the device has helped T-Mobile get more reliable handsets from its suppliers, the company says.