Chinese firm denies stealing wave-power tech

China's leading State-owned shipbuilding group on Thursday called "groundless" a Guardian newspaper report which claimed the company stole wave-power technology from a Scottish company.

The Monday report said the Chinese company allegedly stole information from four or five laptops in March 2011 of Scottish company Pelamis. So innovative was the company that it had been visited by a 60-man delegation led by China's then vice-premier only two months before, the report said.

The No. 710 Research Institute of the Chinese Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Thursday that the accusation is totally groundless.

"The wave-energy product Hailong 1 is based on many years of independent research and development by CSIC, and it is the first wave-power generating device that suits China's conditions," the institute said.

Max Carcas, Pelamis' business development director until 2012, told the Guardian that the similarities between the Scottish and Chinese products were striking.

However, the institute said there are huge differences between the Hailong 1 and the Pelamis' version in terms of design.

First, Hailong 1's pontoon is 20 meters long but Pelamis' is 40 meters long, and Hailong 1 has two pontoons with one connecting piece but Pelamis' has five pontoons with four connecting pieces, said the statement.

Second, "Hailong 1 is for the independent islands' power supply in China, so its design focuses on the stability of generating under one to three meters wave height as well as the survival capability in storms. Pelamis' device focuses on generating capability in big waves."

"Wave-energy device designs around the world are similar, and it is absurd for them to accuse CSIC of stealing their concept," an anonymous doctoral candidate of Tsinghua University's Department of Hydraulic Engineering told the Global Times.

The report said that neither the UK nor Scottish governments plans to challenge China over the patent, because Calum Macfarlane, a spokesman for Wave Energy Scotland, said that "The IP [intellectual property] is not protected in China."

However, Xu Xinming, a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights (IPR), argued that a product infringes on IPR only when its technical characteristics resemble those of another product in its patent claim.