P.M. BRIEFING : GE, Daimler-Benz to Renegotiate

General Electric and West German technology giant Daimler-Benz have agreed to renegotiate their rocky partnership to settle a $1.15-billion lawsuit GE filed after Daimler-Benz announced its cooperation with GE’s top U.S. rival in the jet engine business.

In the lawsuit, General Electric claimed that Daimler’s new alliance with United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney division breached an agreement it already had with GE to develop jet engines.

GE claimed that Daimler-Benz could give away GE’s jet engine trade secrets to UTC.

Under the settlement, announced today by GE and currently pending in U.S. District Court in New York, Daimler-Benz will be free to continue its cooperation with Pratt & Whitney on the high-thrust PW4000 engine.

In return, Daimler-Benz agreed to drop out of the GE’S GE90 jet engine program, to return to GE any trade secrets it has gained so far from its cooperation in the program, and to keep confidential all other proprietary information it has gained from cooperating with GE.