ASML Holding NV has said that an affiliate of a Chinese company that it previously accused of stealing its trade secrets has begun marketing products that could infringe on its intellectual property (IP) rights.
“Early in 2021, we became aware of reports that a company associated with XTAL Inc, against which ASML had obtained a damage award for trade secret misappropriation in 2019 in the USA, was actively marketing products in China that could potentially infringe on ASML’s IP rights,” the Dutch company said in its latest annual report released yesterday.
ASML has requested certain customers not to aid the associated firm Dongfang Jingyuan Electron Ltd (東方晶源微電子科技) — a corporation that has received Beijing’s stamp of approval under a program known as “little giants” — and informed the Chinese authorities of its concerns.
Photo: Reuters
The company said it is “monitoring the situation closely and is ready to take legal action if appropriate.”
An inquiry sent to the official e-mail listed on XTAL’s Web site could not be delivered and calls to Dongfang Jingyuan’s headquarters in Beijing went unanswered.
ASML occupies a pivotal role in the global chip supply chain. It has a monopoly on advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems that are indispensable to producing the most cutting-edge chips in the world, and it also supplies deep ultraviolet lithography machines needed to make more mature semiconductors.
China is reliant on ASML’s technology as it tries to build a domestic chip ecosystem that would reduce its dependence on foreign imports.
However, that effort has been thwarted, with the US government reportedly pressuring Dutch officials not to allow ASML to sell its EUV systems to China in 2019.
To this day, ASML still has not obtained an export license to ship its most advanced machines to China.
Chinese companies racing to build up their technological prowess have often been accused of stealing trade secrets from foreign firms. While Beijing has categorically denied such practices, IP theft has long been a sticking point in China’s relations with other countries, particularly with the US.
In 2019, a US court awarded ASML US$845 million in damages in a trade secrets theft lawsuit against XTAL, although the Dutch company denied it was a victim of Chinese espionage.
In May last year, Dongfang Jingyuan received the title of “little giant,” a designation for start-ups that have been selected under an ambitious government program aimed at fostering a tech industry that can compete with Silicon Valley.
The latest development came as Hytera Communications Corp (海能達通信), a Chinese technology company, was accused by US prosecutors of stealing trade secrets for mobile radio technology developed by Motorola Solutions Inc.
Hytera recruited and hired Motorola employees to take proprietary information from internal databases from 2007 to 2020, according to a 21-count federal indictment unsealed on Monday in Chicago.
The names of others charged in the indictment remained sealed.
In 2020, Motorola won a US$764.6 million civil court verdict against its Chinese rival after a jury concluded that Hytera stole critical trade secrets for two-way radio technology used by school officials, utility workers and construction crews.
Hytera denied stealing technology and said it developed its products on its own.
It has appealed the verdict and accused Motorola of abusing its superior market power to hobble competition.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
RSS