Five former employees of Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科) have been charged with allegedly passing confidential trade secrets from their former employer to a Chinese semiconductor firm last year, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, which previously owned a 33 percent stake in Inotera, in October last year agreed to pay NT$132.5 billion (US$4.39 billion at the current exchange rate) to buy the remaining 67 percent stake in Inotera from Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) and a subsidiary of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團).
The deal was completed in December, after which Inotera became known as Micron Technology Taiwan Inc.
The five defendants, who were mid-level management employees or high-level engineers, all joined a Chinese semiconductor firm after resigning from Inotera one after the other in September to November last year, prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors said Inotera suspected that the five stole classified internal documents after they were all recruited by the same Chinese firm.
The prosecutors did not give the name of the Chinese company, but the Chinese-language United Evening News said it was the Chinese government-backed Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光), citing anonymous sources in the prosecutors’ office.
The daily said that Tsinghua Unigroup has a record of poaching Taiwanese working for semiconductor firms as China develops its own semiconductor industry.
The five suspects breached Inotera’s regulations by taking photographs of operational information regarding the company’s clean room and making paper copies of its confidential trade documents, prosecutors said in the statement.
One suspect, surnamed Fan (范), allegedly sent the photographs and documents via his e-mail and WeChat accounts to the Chinese company when he was still working at Inotera, they said.
The five were paid a monthly salary of at least NT$200,000 as a reward by the Chinese company, three times their Inotera salaries, prosecutors said.
The Chinese-language China Times reported that the Taoyuan prosecutors stopped the suspects at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in February, seizing their smartphones, notebook computers and bank passbooks.
The five have been charged with contravening the Trade Secrets Act (營業秘密法) and the Criminal Code, the prosecutors said, adding that their office has asked the court to retrieve any money the five received for passing trade secrets.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS