14 DAY TRIAL // The Department of Justice has charged today a state-owned Chinese enterprise, a Taiwanese semiconductor company, and three Taiwanese individuals for supposedly conspiring to steal trade secrets from Idaho-based semiconductor company Micron Technology, Inc. (Micron).
As detailed in the indictment, Micron is "worth an estimated $100 billion and has a 20 to 25 percent share of the dynamic random access memory industry—a technology not possessed by the Chinese until very recently."
The charged parties in the multi-defendant indictment (.PDF) are "United Microelectronics Corporation (“UMC”), a Taiwan semiconductor foundry; Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, Co., Ltd. (“Jinhua'”), a state-owned enterprise of the PRC; and three Taiwan nationals: Chen Zhengkun, a.k.a. Stephen Chen, age 55; He Jianting, a.k.a. J.T. Ho, age 42; and Wang Yungming, a.k.a. Kenny Wang, age 44."
At the moment, Micron is the only U.S. manufacturer of DRAM, and it maintains its position on the market with the help of its intellectual property and trade secrets which cover the design, the development, and the manufacturing of DRAM.
According to the DoJ indictment, Chen together with Ho and Wang managed to steal Micron trade secrets related to both the design and manufacturing of DRAM from Micron Memory Taiwan (MMT), a Taiwanese subsidiary of Micron.
Individuals face 25 years in jail, $5 million in fines, while companies could get $20 billion in fines
They were able to convey the trade secrets to UMC, which would later transfer the stolen tech to Chinese-owned Jinhua which, in turn, promoted Chen to the President position and made him the person in charge of its DRAM production facility.
Also, Wang allegedly managed to download "over 900 Micron confidential and proprietary files before he left MMT and stored them on USB external hard drives or in personal cloud storage, from where he could access the technology while working at UMC."
As detailed in DoJ's press release, every individual will face a $5 million fine and up to 15 years in jail if convicted for economic espionage charges, as well as 10 years behind bars for the theft of trade secrets charge.
The two companies, on the other hand, both face forfeiture and $20 billion maximum fine if all charges stand.
The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) also announced the addition of the Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Company, Ltd (Jinhua) to the Entity List on October 29 because of a heightened risk of being involved in actions against national security interests of the United States.