International Rectifier Corp. has dodged a hostile takeover and weathered an accounting scandal. Now the El Segundo maker of power management chips is going to court with its former chief executive – the son of the company’s founder – accusing him of stealing trade secrets.

The tension reached a critical point in September, when International Rectifier filed a federal suit accusing Alexander Lidow of engaging in an ongoing criminal enterprise – also known as a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization, or Rico – by stealing information, intellectual property and technology related to the company’s secret research on a superconducting material that could become the future of semiconductor power management technology. A key hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 2.

The suit alleges that Lidow devised a plan to steal IR’s trade secrets, and then recruited six former IR researchers and sales executives to help him launch a competing company, which is currently using the stolen research to develop its own products from the special material, called gallium nitride.

IR’s chips are in consumer products, such as washing machines, laptop computers, automotive systems and Sony’s PlayStation, as well as military satellites.

Robert Sacks, Lidow’s attorney, said his clients are not using IR’s gallium nitride technology, and that Lidow’s new venture is developing a different product in the semiconductor field.

“There is no substance to the claims,” Sacks said. “It’s an effort to retaliate further and to cause him harm.”

Sacks said he didn’t want Lidow to comment because of the litigation; Lidow did not return calls.

In a statement to the Business Journal’s request for an interview about the litigation, IR executives said that the company, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and posted annual revenue of $985 million in 2008, has an obligation to protect its intellectual property.

“IR is of course not pleased that the dispute has come to the point of litigation against our former CEO,” executives said in the statement.

The battle between IR and Lidow could become a burgeoning cottage industry of lawsuits for the attorneys involved in the case. Sacks said Lidow is planning to file a wrongful termination lawsuit against the company in the coming months.

The beginnings

The problems began in 2007, when Lidow resigned as chief executive after an investigation by an independent audit committee hired by the company revealed that accounting irregularities cost IR about $117 million, and forced the company to restate two years of earnings. The irregularities included faked sales figures at the company’s Japanese subsidiary. At the time, IR’s announcement did not specify what led to Lidow’s resignation.

IR has restated the earnings, and the independent investigation has been completed, according to a company spokesman.