Thursday, May 4th 2017
TSMC Trade Secrets Stolen - Former Engineer Arrested In China
In the highly competitive, high-stakes scene of the business world - and particularly so in the silicon giants of the era - trade secrets, specifications, and protecting one's intellectual property that give the leg-up on competitors is key towards success. And while most companies work within the meanders of law (even if sometimes skirting it ever so lightly), some don't. And things like this happen: the steal (or purported steal, because no one has been convicted yet) of trade secrets by former employees is one of the most dreaded occurrences in the tech world - remember Zenimax and Carmack's "dovetailing"?
Chinese manufacturers are looking to enter the high-performance computing market with their own products, designs, and manufacturing capability. In this case, former TSMC engineer Hsu is being accused of stealing proprietary information and other materials related to the foundry's 28 nm process technology. The goal would be to pass them to China-based Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC), with which he accepted a job offer, according to the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office. Digitimes reports that HLMC had been aggressively headhunting for talent to kick start its 28 nm manufacturing process, though if true, this sound like a little too aggressive of a headhunting.
Sources:
Digitimes, WCCFTech
Chinese manufacturers are looking to enter the high-performance computing market with their own products, designs, and manufacturing capability. In this case, former TSMC engineer Hsu is being accused of stealing proprietary information and other materials related to the foundry's 28 nm process technology. The goal would be to pass them to China-based Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC), with which he accepted a job offer, according to the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office. Digitimes reports that HLMC had been aggressively headhunting for talent to kick start its 28 nm manufacturing process, though if true, this sound like a little too aggressive of a headhunting.
36 Comments on TSMC Trade Secrets Stolen - Former Engineer Arrested In China
I expect TSMC and other applicable parties (AMD/Nvidia) to sue any company that makes use of these illegal actions, and then I wonder if China will finally start recognizing international law...
China still has no hight tech skill really... nor metallurgy nor semiconductor, no matter how they try to spy.
:toast:
Stop living under rocks, they may still be trailing US now. With the current state of US (bat shit crazy liberals, shrinking public funding for scientific research) it will be a lot harder to say 20 yrs down the road.
is easier to "hire" someone with knowledge (secrets) than learning from scratch...
Only time Chinese companies have to actually begin obeying business laws and practices of the west is when they go global. Because they are simply forced into this. But having such massive market as China, basically anyone good enough at stealing and copying can become big to enter global markets. And it's easier to start doing that when you're already big than for example European or American startups that have to start from zero in a proper way without just copying someone's design and learning from that pretty much for free.
You can call me racist or Chinese hater, but that's all a fact, I'm more surprised you're not aware of it...
@laszlo
There is a difference between lending your excellent engineering skills and just plain handing them over the blueprints...
When you say "engrained in their culture" in the reader is created an image of ancient chinese emperors making Ming porcelains as in Ghost just after stealing the procedure to produce it.
The truth is china was a rural, pre industrialization economy just until 1980. There is really truly nothing of what you perceive as their way of living "engrained in their culture".
Moreover, if you think that western patent system is something that can result in an advantage for the consumer you are wrong.
There is nothing that says that the western way is THE way. Open economical competition truly involve different meanings and levels of the word "copy".