TSMC<\/a>Or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., one of the world’s most valuable companies and counts Nvidia and Apple as major customers.<\/p>\nIn handing down the 10-year sentence at Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, Judge Chang Ming-huang said Chen Li-ming, who worked at TSMC before moving to Tokyo Electron’s subsidiary in Taiwan, is believed to have used his connections with his former TSMC colleagues to illegally access and collect the chip maker’s trade secrets. <\/p>\n
According to the court, Chen photographed, copied and forwarded the material to help Tokyo-based Tokyo Electron upgrade its technologies and improve its bids as a TSMC supplier.<\/p>\n
Chen’s motivation was primarily to “improve his personal work performance,” Chang said, but he also jeopardized the competitiveness and economic security of Taiwan and its chip manufacturing industry.<\/p>\n
TSMC did not immediately comment on Monday’s decision.<\/p>\n
Taiwanese prosecutors indicted Chen and others in August on alleged trade secret theft. Tokyo Electron said in a statement at the time that it had fired an employee involved in the matter, but added that its internal investigation had not confirmed that confidential information had been leaked.<\/p>\n
The Japanese company said on Monday that it “takes the court’s decision extremely seriously” and will strengthen its “information management system and other relevant measures.” But it stressed that the court and its own investigation found no organizational involvement by Tokyo Electron.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Chan reported from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Taipei City, Taiwan — A Taiwanese court on Monday sentenced a former employee of Japanese computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron to 10 years in prison in a landmark case over trade secrets of the island’s leading chipmaker TSMC. Tokyo Electron was also fined 150 million New Taiwan dollars ($5 million) and four others<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[500,700,25914,1172,2884,12404,3991,5446,1796,18106,1031],"class_list":{"0":"post-100889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-case","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-electron","11":"tag-employees","12":"tag-secret","13":"tag-sentences","14":"tag-taiwan","15":"tag-tokyo","16":"tag-trade","17":"tag-tsmc","18":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100891,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100889\/revisions\/100891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}