Motorola Solutions Recovers $232 Million From Hytera as Landmark Trade Secret Case Continues
Company Has Recovered Nearly Half of the Original $631.6 Million Award Through Combined Payments and Royalties Since 2022.
Motorola Solutions, Inc. has recovered $232 million from Hytera Communications Corporation Limited as of July 4, 2026, according to the company's latest financial disclosures, as it also confirmed that gains and expenses tied to the long-running dispute continue to be treated as non-recurring items outside its ongoing business results. The recovery traces back to a complaint Motorola Solutions filed in 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Hytera Communications Corporation Limited of Shenzhen, China, together with its U.S. subsidiaries Hytera America, Inc. and Hytera Communications America (West), Inc., alleging trade secret theft and copyright infringement and seeking injunctive relief.
In 2020, a federal jury ruled in Motorola Solutions' favor, awarding the company $543.7 million in damages. The District Court subsequently added $51.1 million in pre-judgment interest, $2.6 million in costs, and $34.2 million in attorneys' fees, bringing the total original judgment to $631.6 million. Both parties appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which in 2024 affirmed $407.4 million of the award as damages under the Defend Trade Secrets Act while directing the District Court to recalculate and reduce the $136.3 million awarded for copyright infringement, a recalculation that remains pending.
As of July 4, 2026, Hytera had paid $232 million against the judgment, a figure shaped in part by the 2020 bankruptcy proceedings of its two U.S. subsidiaries, with $60 million of that total paid during the first half of 2026 alone. Separately, Motorola Solutions has pursued ongoing royalty payments tied to Hytera's ongoing use of the disputed technology in current product lines. Following a 2022 District Court order covering Hytera's I-Series products sold from July 2019 onward, Motorola Solutions received $61 million in I-Series royalties in 2024. A further favorable ruling beginning in 2025, now under appeal by Hytera, extended similar obligations to Hytera's currently shipping H-Series line, under which Hytera has reported approximately $116 million owed. Motorola Solutions has stated it continues to pursue collection of that amount through the ongoing legal process.
Motorola Solutions has confirmed that it does not consider Hytera-related legal costs to be part of the normal, recurring legal expense of running its business. Since 2020, the company has excluded these costs from its underlying operating results on that basis, and has said it will apply the same treatment to any gains recognized from the litigation as they occur. Under this approach, the company has identified approximately $15 million in Hytera-related gains recognized in 2022, $61 million in 2024, $157 million in 2025, and $60 million in the first half of 2026, together totalling roughly $293 million recognized since 2022. Motorola Solutions has said this treatment better reflects how management evaluates the underlying performance of its ongoing business, separate from the financial effects of the Hytera litigation.
The case remains one of the largest intellectual property judgments in the professional mobile radio sector and continues to be closely followed across the critical communications industry as a benchmark for trade secret protection among competing manufacturers.
