Taiwan charges three in TSMC trade secret theft investigation

Prosecutors have charged three individuals with allegedly stealing trade secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), intensifying scrutiny on the sensitive nature of chipmaking technology. Taiwan is pursuing prison sentences of at least seven years for the group, citing a national security threat, according to a prosecutors’ statement.
Debby Wu and Mayumi Negishi for Bloomberg News:
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Among those charged was a former TSMC employee who attempted to gain access to the chipmaker’s confidential data while employed at Japanese equipment maker Tokyo Electron Ltd., prosecutors said, and they are looking for 14 years for this engineer surnamed Chen.
The case has put a low-profile, lesser-known tech linchpin in Japan under unusual scrutiny. According to prosecutors, the individual convinced former TSMC co-workers to share proprietary technology, and two of them got indicted together with Chen.
Tokyo Electron — one of the world’s biggest makers of chipmaking tools and a key supplier to TSMC— previously said it fired an employee at its Taipei unit in connection with the case and is cooperating with the investigation.
Taiwan makes the most advanced semiconductors in the world and its companies have regularly been targeted for their intellectual property by entities with ties to China, which is pushing hard to develop its own chip capabilities. TSMC, chipmaker to Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp., reported the alleged theft to Taiwan authorities this year, triggering the current probe.

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MacDailyNews Take: As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “There is no place where espionage is not possible.”

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