Taiwanese businesses have called for a law on industrial espionage, especially by China, as growing ties have made it easier for Chinese firms to steal secrets, officials and media said yesterday.
Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀), chairman of the flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), made the appeal while meeting President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) with a group of high-tech entrepreneurs on Wednesday.
The proposal was prompted by a spate of cases involving the theft of business secrets from Taiwan’s high-tech companies, Lee said, without providing details.
“Taiwan really needs such a law now as it faces mounting competition from mainland China,” another official from AU Optronics told reporters.
The idea seemed to be supported by several firms, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電).
“Such a law will better help Taiwan’s industry,” TSMC spokeswoman Elizabeth Sun (孫又文) said.
Currently, suspects are indicted on charges such as breach of trust and embezzlement, but Lee said the punishment for such crimes was not enough.
The Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association, which groups the nation’s major electronics firms, also called for a law as early as possible.
TSMC filed a lawsuit against Chinese rival Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) in the US in 2003, alleging SMIC improperly obtained its trade secrets and infringed patents. In 2005, SMIC agreed to pay TSMC US$175 million to settle the case after the Taiwan chipmaker filed new evidence of corporate espionage with a US court.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
RSS