ASML Holding NV has said that an affiliate of a Chinese company that it previously accused of stealing its trade secrets has begun marketing products that could infringe on its intellectual property (IP) rights.
“Early in 2021, we became aware of reports that a company associated with XTAL Inc, against which ASML had obtained a damage award for trade secret misappropriation in 2019 in the USA, was actively marketing products in China that could potentially infringe on ASML’s IP rights,” the Dutch company said in its latest annual report released yesterday.
ASML has requested certain customers not to aid the associated firm Dongfang Jingyuan Electron Ltd (東方晶源微電子科技) — a corporation that has received Beijing’s stamp of approval under a program known as “little giants” — and informed the Chinese authorities of its concerns.
Photo: Reuters
The company said it is “monitoring the situation closely and is ready to take legal action if appropriate.”
An inquiry sent to the official e-mail listed on XTAL’s Web site could not be delivered and calls to Dongfang Jingyuan’s headquarters in Beijing went unanswered.
ASML occupies a pivotal role in the global chip supply chain. It has a monopoly on advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems that are indispensable to producing the most cutting-edge chips in the world, and it also supplies deep ultraviolet lithography machines needed to make more mature semiconductors.
China is reliant on ASML’s technology as it tries to build a domestic chip ecosystem that would reduce its dependence on foreign imports.
However, that effort has been thwarted, with the US government reportedly pressuring Dutch officials not to allow ASML to sell its EUV systems to China in 2019.
To this day, ASML still has not obtained an export license to ship its most advanced machines to China.
Chinese companies racing to build up their technological prowess have often been accused of stealing trade secrets from foreign firms. While Beijing has categorically denied such practices, IP theft has long been a sticking point in China’s relations with other countries, particularly with the US.
In 2019, a US court awarded ASML US$845 million in damages in a trade secrets theft lawsuit against XTAL, although the Dutch company denied it was a victim of Chinese espionage.
In May last year, Dongfang Jingyuan received the title of “little giant,” a designation for start-ups that have been selected under an ambitious government program aimed at fostering a tech industry that can compete with Silicon Valley.
The latest development came as Hytera Communications Corp (海能達通信), a Chinese technology company, was accused by US prosecutors of stealing trade secrets for mobile radio technology developed by Motorola Solutions Inc.
Hytera recruited and hired Motorola employees to take proprietary information from internal databases from 2007 to 2020, according to a 21-count federal indictment unsealed on Monday in Chicago.
The names of others charged in the indictment remained sealed.
In 2020, Motorola won a US$764.6 million civil court verdict against its Chinese rival after a jury concluded that Hytera stole critical trade secrets for two-way radio technology used by school officials, utility workers and construction crews.
Hytera denied stealing technology and said it developed its products on its own.
It has appealed the verdict and accused Motorola of abusing its superior market power to hobble competition.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
At least US$50 million for the freedom of an Emirati sheikh: That is the king’s ransom paid two weeks ago to militants linked to al-Qaeda who are pushing to topple the Malian government and impose Islamic law. Alongside a crippling fuel blockade, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has made kidnapping wealthy foreigners for a ransom a pillar of its strategy of “economic jihad.” Its goal: Oust the junta, which has struggled to contain Mali’s decade-long insurgency since taking power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, by scaring away investors and paralyzing the west African country’s economy.
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
RSS