Science council mulling industrial espionage law

The export of some kinds of technology developed by private companies would become a criminal offense according to a proposed law being drafted by the National Science Council (NSC).

The council held a coordination meeting yesterday involving representatives from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Mainland Affairs Council and the high-tech industry to establish the framework of legislation to prevent the outflow of high technology developed by companies and research institutions that receive government funding.

The draft of the proposed "national technology protection law" (國家科技保護法) will be discussed in an NSC meeting on Friday to iron out how responsibilities for enforcing the law would be shared by different agencies.

"Our meeting concluded that the soon-to-be-drafted law would not conflict with existing laws," NSC Vice Chairman Huang Wen-hsiung (黃文雄) said yesterday.

Huang said that existing regulations on trading and importing strategic high-tech products would not be affected. The proposed law, he said, would protect only certain strategic, high-tech industries. He said the proposed law would be an effective one, rather than just a policy statement.

"Future outflow of high technology developed by private enterprises and research units with financial support from the government might lead to" civil prosecution, fines or imprisonment, Huang said.

He explained that some parts of the US Economic Espionage Act had been used in the NSC draft.

Yen Tsung-ming (顏宗明), deputy director-general of the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park administration, said the proposed law could protect companies better because harsher punishments would make people think twice about committing economic espionage.

Huang said that the passage of the proposal would not restrict Taiwan from importing advanced technologies from overseas.

He said that industry representatives supported the proposed law despite previously expressing their reservations.

"They believe that the government is on the same side as them," Huang said.

Company executives had said the proposed law would blur the distinction between public and private property and perhaps infringe on the property rights of private enterprises.

The NSC also said it was developing a set of measures, which it hopes to have completed by the end of this month, which would regulate the emigration of high-tech experts to China.

Council officials said one of the measures they were considering was requiring experts employed by institutions that received government funding to apply for a permit to work in China at least one month before the date of their intended travel.