The University of Texas filed a damages suit in the United States in 2001 against NTT Corp. over NTT's patented battery technology, which the school claims was taken from it by a former student who worked as an engineer for the firm, NTT officials said Thursday.
The university is demanding an unspecified sum of damages and claiming the former NTT engineer took related technological information from the school when he studied there in 1993 and 1994, the officials said.
An NTT official said the firm is contesting the suit because "there was no illegal act whatsoever."
The NTT officials claimed the former engineer developed technology to produce rechargeable batteries at a lower cost after returning to Japan from his study at the University of Texas.