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.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS