An employee sold its secrets to the Chinese. The company's proprietary software ended up in the hands of its biggest customer, Sinovel Wind Group Co. AMSC, makes the controls that make wind turbines work; it had been selling those parts to Sinovel, a wind turbine manufacturer. Then, suddenly, Sinovel refused to accept the parts it had ordered. Later, AMSC executives said they discovered that Sinovel stopped paying for shipments because it had stolen AMSC's proprietary technology and had started using it. The AMSC employee who sold the precious codes was convicted in an Austrian court and sentenced to a year behind bars. Separately, AMSC filed three civil suits and one arbitration case against Sinovel in Chinese courts, seeking $1.2 billion for the rejected shipments and the value of its allegedly stolen intellectual property. Sinovel's actions last year dealt a major setback to AMSC - one that cost the company millions and triggered the layoff of hundreds - but one from which AMSC vows it will recover (Anderson,