Taiwan court jails ex‑TSMC engineer 10 years
- Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced former TSMC engineer Chen Li-ming to 10 years and fined Tokyo Electron Taiwan NT$150 million Monday. - Judges said Chen used ties to former colleagues to obtain TSMC’s 2-nanometer process secrets; four other defendants got terms from suspended to six years. - Taiwan treats sub-14nm chip processes as protected national core technologies, tightening scrutiny on suppliers and staff. (focustaiwan.tw)
A Taiwan court sentenced former TSMC engineer Chen Li-ming to 10 years in prison on Monday for stealing trade secrets tied to the chipmaker’s 2-nanometer process. (focustaiwan.tw) (abcnews.com) The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court also fined Tokyo Electron Taiwan NT$150 million, about $5 million, and sentenced four other defendants to prison terms ranging from a suspended 10 months to six years. (ca.news.yahoo.com) (focustaiwan.tw) Prosecutors said Chen left TSMC’s Fab 12 and joined Tokyo Electron Taiwan’s marketing division, then repeatedly asked current TSMC engineers for confidential data from the second half of 2023 through the first half of 2025. (focustaiwan.tw) (taipeitimes.com) The stolen material involved etching equipment and process details used in TSMC’s 2nm production, and the court said images of the information were found on Tokyo Electron’s cloud system. (focustaiwan.tw) (ca.news.yahoo.com) Chip process know-how is the recipe for making faster, lower-power semiconductors, and equipment suppliers use that information to tune tools for each manufacturing step. In this case, prosecutors said the data was used to evaluate and improve etching equipment so Tokyo Electron could win more TSMC business. (taipeitimes.com) (abcnews.com) Taiwan treated the case as a national security matter, not just a corporate theft case. The court said four defendants violated the National Security Act by intending to use trade secrets outside Taiwan, and Focus Taiwan said it was the first case involving a corporate entity under that law. (ca.news.yahoo.com) (focustaiwan.tw) That legal framing reflects a policy shift in Taiwan. The government has classified sub-14nm semiconductor technologies as “national core key technologies,” putting leading-edge chip processes under tighter protection. (ca.news.yahoo.com) (taipeitimes.com) TSMC reported the matter to authorities on July 8, 2025 after an internal investigation found irregularities, and prosecutors carried out searches and interrogations later that month before indicting the suspects in August. (focustaiwan.tw) (abcnews.com) Tokyo Electron said it takes the ruling “with the utmost seriousness” and will strengthen information management systems, while also saying the court and its own investigation did not find organizational involvement by the parent company. The ruling can still be appealed. (ca.news.yahoo.com) (abcnews.com)
