A former vice president who handled research and development (R&D) at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) company, is accused of leaking secrets as the person moved to U.S. chipmaker Intel.
On the 19th, Taiwan media including the Liberty Times and the United Daily News, citing sources, reported that Luo Weiren, TSMC's senior vice president for technology R&D and corporate strategy development, copied and took out confidential materials related to cutting-edge process technologies such as 2-nanometer (nm, one-billionth of a meter), A14 (1.4 nm), and A16 (1.6 nm) just before retiring at the end of July.
The source said the former vice president Luo already returned last month to Intel, where the person had previously worked.
The source said the former vice president Luo worked at Intel before formally joining TSMC in 2004 and is currently participating in work to improve the Production yield issues of the 18A manufacturing process under testing in Intel's research and development (R&D) institutional sector.
Another source said the confidential materials and other items the former vice president Luo removed before leaving the company amounted to as many as 80 boxes.
Regarding this, Taiwan Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin held back, saying TSMC's announcement would be more accurate.
Taiwan prosecutors have begun collecting evidence and investigating, and said that if TSMC files a formal complaint, they will handle it by applying the precedent of the 2-nanometer process secret leakage case that occurred on the 7th.
In the July secret leakage case, after the May 2022 amendment to the National Security Act, the offense of extraterritorial use of trade secrets of "national core critical technologies" related to semiconductor technology was applied for the first time.
If this law is applied, the maximum penalty is 12 years in prison and a fine of up to NT$100 million (about 4.6 billion won).
One source said the former vice president Luo is currently in the United States, not in Taiwan.
It is also known that the former vice president Luo did not sign a noncompete clause for changing jobs within the same industry, and even if signed, the Taiwan side was expected to find it difficult to draw the sword while tariff negotiations with the United States have not been concluded.
Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump decided to impose a 20% tariff on Taiwan, where a trade deal has not been completed.
President Trump said in February that Taiwan had taken away the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said the 20% tariff was a "temporary rate" imposed in the final stage of negotiations in August and expressed hope it would be lower at the time of the final agreement.