A China-based supplier of chipmaking equipment fought back against the US Department of Defense (DoD) designating it as a Chinese military company, winning a lawsuit for the removal from a watchlist, Bloomberg reported.

Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment sued the DoD in August after the Pentagon put it on a list of companies with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army, insisting it has no links with the military, the news agency wrote.

The Pentagon removed the company from its list this month.

The partially state-owned company produces a range chipmaking gear, with its systems used to build light emitting diodes (LEDs) for solid-state lighting applications and power electronic devices.

A major customer is Yangtze Memory Technologies, which is on the Pentagon’s watchlist, Bloomberg stated.

In early December, the US widened export controls on advanced chips and chipmaking machinery to cover additional manufacturing and software tools and added 136 Chinese companies to its entity list.

That moved prompted China to retaliate in an ongoing trade war, with a stock market regulator opening a probe into Nvidia for allegedly violating anti-monopoly laws and the Ministry of Commerce banning the export of certain strategic minerals.