Odaily Planet Daily reports that according to sources in Taiwan, four former TSMC engineers—Chen Liming, Wu Bingjun, Ge Yiping, and Chen Weijie—were sentenced to prison terms of 10, 3, 2, and 6 years respectively by the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court in Taiwan for stealing and leaking confidential data related to 2-nanometer technology. Chen Liming and Chen Weijie appealed the verdict, but Taiwan’s Supreme Court rejected their appeals on the 30th, meaning they will now be sent directly to prison to serve their sentences.
Reports state that Wu Bingjun and Ge Yiping did not appeal after the first-instance court ruling, and the prosecution also did not appeal, thus the initial sentencing has become effective. Chen Liming was formerly a yield engineer at TSMC’s Factory 12; after leaving his position, he joined Taiwan’s Tokyo Electron, a semiconductor manufacturing equipment supplier to TSMC, working in its marketing department. In an effort to perform well, he sought to secure more equipment supply contracts for Tokyo Electron in TSMC’s advanced processes. He repeatedly leveraged his former collegial relationships with Wu, Ge, Chen, and others to request that they copy TSMC’s confidential files. The four engineers accessed confidential files via the work laptops of still-employed engineers involved in the case and either copied them directly for Chen Liming or transmitted the copied files to him. (Global Times)