Prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted three people for allegedly stealing technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to help win more orders from the company for one of its equipment suppliers, Tokyo Electron.
The case, which comes after the three were arrested in August, highlights the increasing sensitivity around semiconductors and the complex technologies involved in manufacturing them, which have become a political bargaining chip in recent years.
Taiwan is for the first time prosecuting the three people under national security laws.
Trade secrets
TSMC is one of Taiwan’s most important companies, as the world’s largest contract chipmaker, manufacturing chips for Apple, Nvidia and others.
Theft of trade secrets has grown over the past decade, with many cases involving China, according to Taiwanese officials. The country’s investigation bureau has logged more than 120 cases involving trade-secret theft in the past two years or so.
In this case, however, prosecutors said the secrets were intended to improve Tokyo Electron’s etching machines as the Japanese company sought orders from TSMC for its advanced 2-nanometre production lines.
A defendant surnamed Chen was charged along with people surnamed Wu and Ge for theft and intended overseas use of core technologies, with up to 14 years in prison requested for Chen, nine for Wu and seven for Ge.
Chen, a former TSMC employee, allegedly obtained sensitive files from former TSMC colleagues to benefit Tokyo Electron after joining the company’s marketing division.
TSMC filed a complaint in the case on 8 July after it detected irregular access to confidential information.
‘No organisational involvement’
Tokyo Electron said last week an internal investigation has not confirmed any organisational involvement in the affair.
It said its own probe has “not confirmed any organisational involvement, such as instructions encouraging the inappropriate acquisition of information by the said former employee, nor any leakage of related confidential information to outside parties”.
The company said in August it had dismissed the employee in question.
Further emphasising the importance of trade secrets within the company, TSMC said it is to market a system it developed internally to manage such information to companies in Europe and the US.
The company’s associate general counsel told Reuters that TSMC’s trade secret management system could be used by customers to build a “stronger innovation culture and more systematic management” which TSMC could then in turn benefit from.
