United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the nation’s second-largest contract chipmaker, and three of its employees were on Wednesday indicted for alleged theft and use of trade secrets from Micron Technology Inc’s local units in the latest row over escalating talent poaching.
UMC, Ho Chien-ting (何建廷), Wang Yong-ming (王永銘) and Rong Le-tien (戎樂天) allegedly illegally replicated Micron’s manufacturing techniques for the profit of UMC businesses in China, the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said in its indictment.
UMC is developing DRAM chip manufacturing technologies in collaboration with China’s Fujian Jin Hua Integrated Circuit Co (晉華集成電路) via a Chinese subsidiary.
Photo: Hung Yu-fang, Taipei Times
UMC and its employees contravened the Trade Secrets Act (營業秘密法) and the Copyright Act (著作權法), prosecutors said.
In a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Wednesday, UMC said it had not received official notification of the indictment.
UMC would fully cooperate with any investigation and would hire lawyers to safeguard its interests, it added.
Micron said it aims to protect its intellectual property through the lawsuits.
The government’s enforcement of related rules would assure foreign investors who are interested in investing in Taiwan that their properties and interests would be fully safeguarded, it added.
Ho and Wang are former employees of Micron’s local unit, where Ho was a section chief and Wang a manufacturing deputy manager.
In November 2015, Ho joined UMC as technical manager for special projects.
Wang followed suit in March last year, joining UMC as a technical manager for components.
Ho stole classified trade secrets from Micron and used them at UMC, helping a UMC subsidiary in China manufacture memorychip wafers, prosecutors said.
Wang is suspected of stealing manufacturing technology and protocols, which he gave to Rong, a UMC technical division associate, to speed up the design of UMC’s process protocol, prosecutors said.
Micron in February filed a lawsuit after discovering that Wang had made electronic copies of company files, which he allegedly handed over to UMC.
Later that month, prosecutors raided UMC’s Tainan plant.
After learning about the search, Rong reportedly instructed Ho and Wang to delete all related information from the company’s database.
When questioned by prosecutors, Ho and Wang claimed that they took the data for personal research, while Rong said he only made suggestions to Wang on manufacturing design.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS