Overview

• Beijing E-Town filed its complaint on August 14 in Beijing’s intellectual property court, accusing Applied Materials of misappropriating proprietary plasma-source wafer-treatment technology.
• The suit seeks a court injunction to block Applied’s use of the disputed technology, destruction of related materials and roughly 100 million yuan in damages.
• E-Town alleges that Applied hired two former Mattson employees who had access to its plasma technologies and then listed them as inventors on a Chinese patent application.
• To date the court has accepted the filing but has not scheduled a trial or issued any rulings on interim relief.
• China accounted for about 37 percent of Applied’s fiscal 2024 revenue, and analysts warn that US tariffs could cut as much as $400 million from its fiscal 2025 earnings.