Motorola Solutions, Inc & Anor v Hytera Communications Corporation Ltd & Ors

Section 5 of the Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980 prevents enforcement of a foreign judgment for multiple damages. Where compensatory and punitive elements arise from the same cause of action and the punitive award is arrived at by multiplying the compensatory award, the judgment is unenforceable in its entirety for that cause of action. This remains so where the judgment separately identifies the compensatory and punitive sums.

Ancillary interest, costs and attorney’s fees are also sums payable under the judgment. They cannot be enforced where they are awarded globally and cannot be apportioned between an objectionable multiple-damages cause of action and a separately enforceable cause of action.

Motorola sought to enforce in England parts of a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The sums sought comprised pre- and post-judgment interest, attorney’s fees and costs. The underlying judgment included compensatory damages under the Copyright Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act, together with punitive damages under the latter statute.

The punitive damages were exactly twice the DTSA compensatory damages. The Seventh Circuit had affirmed the DTSA awards but remanded aspects of the copyright damages. Hytera opposed enforcement under section 5 of the Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980. The central issues were whether the DTSA award was a judgment for multiple damages, whether the compensatory element and ancillary sums could be severed, and whether the foreign judgment was final and conclusive.

1. Disposition. The court treated the trial as determining a preliminary issue and gave judgment for Hytera. Motorola’s claims to enforce the disputed interest, costs and attorney’s fees were dismissed.
2. Under section 5(3) of the Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980, the relevant question is how the foreign award was arrived at. The DTSA punitive damages were a judgment for multiple damages because the Illinois Court simply doubled the DTSA compensatory award. It was immaterial that the statute imposed a cap rather than an automatic doubling mechanism.
3. The distinction in Lewis v Eliades concerned separate causes of action: a purely compensatory judgment could be enforced even though a distinct cause of action produced multiple damages. It did not permit enforcement of the compensatory element of a single judgment based on multiplication.
4. Following SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd, the whole judgment relating to the DTSA cause of action was unenforceable. The compensatory element could not be severed from the punitive element. The court expressly held that SAS was correctly decided.
5. Interest, costs and attorney’s fees were sums payable under the DTSA judgment within section 5(1). Interest formed part of the compensation; costs and fees were remedies or consequential awards rather than separate causes of action. The Illinois Court had awarded them globally and had not apportioned them between the Copyright Act and DTSA claims. The English court could not speculate or conduct its own apportionment.
6. The court distinguished Hangzhou Jiudang Asset Management Co Ltd v Kei Kin Hung, where default interest arose from a separate breach and was not compensation multiplied under the foreign judgment. The court did not decide the separate finality issue because the claims failed under section 5.

This was a first-instance decision in the Commercial Court. The judgment records that the Seventh Circuit Court had affirmed the DTSA damages and punitive damages, while remanding aspects of the copyright damages for further proceedings. The English court did not determine the effect of that remand on finality.