NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan (AP) \u2014 A court in Taiwan sentenced a former employee of Japanese computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron to 10 years in prison on Monday in a landmark case over trade secrets of the island\u2019s leading chipmaker TSMC.<\/p>\n
Tokyo Electron was also fined 150 million new Taiwan dollars ($5 million) and four other people were sentenced to up to six years in jail.<\/p>\n
The heavy sentencing under Taiwan\u2019s national security act and other statutes underscores Taiwan’s efforts to protect the self-ruled island\u2019s advanced technology and semiconductor sector, which are vital for its export-oriented economy as artificial intelligence booms.<\/p>\n
TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., is one of the world\u2019s most valuable companies and counts Nvidia and Apple as key customers.<\/p>\n
In handing down the 10-year sentence at Taiwan\u2019s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, Judge Chang Ming-huang said Chen Li-ming, who worked at TSMC before moving to Tokyo Electron’s subsidiary in Taiwan, was believed to have used his relationships with his former TSMC colleagues to illegally access and collect the chip maker’s trade secrets. <\/p>\n
Chen photographed, copied and passed along the materials to help Tokyo-based Tokyo Electron upgrade its technologies and improve its bids as a TSMC supplier, according to the court.<\/p>\n
Chen’s motivation was mainly to \u201cimprove his personal work performance,\u201d Chang said, but he jeopardized the competitiveness and economic security of Taiwan and its chipmaking industry.<\/p>\n
TSMC did not immediately comment on Monday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
Taiwan\u2019s prosecutors indicted Chen and others in August on alleged trade secret theft. Tokyo Electron said in a statement at the time it had dismissed an employee involved in the case but also said its internal investigation had not confirmed evidence of the that confidential information was leaked.<\/p>\n
The Japanese company said Monday that it takes \u201cthe court\u2019s finding with the utmost seriousness\u201d and will strengthen its “information management systems and other relevant measures.\u201d But it stressed that the court and its own probe had not found any organizational involvement by Tokyo Electron.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Chan reported from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan (AP) \u2014 A court in Taiwan sentenced a former employee of Japanese computer chip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1530,10527,1532,1529,8,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-12546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tokyo","8":"tag-ap-business","9":"tag-ap-technology","10":"tag-ap-world-news","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-japan","13":"tag-tokyo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}