A Taiwan court handed down sentences of up to 10 years to those involved in the leak of trade secrets on TSMC's cutting-edge 2-nanometer (nm, one-billionth of a meter) process, the world's largest foundry's technology. The individuals were known to have passed related information to Tokyo Electron (TEL), Japan's largest semiconductor equipment company.
According to the Central News Agency and Bloomberg on the 27th local time, a panel of the Taiwan Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced former TSMC employee Chen Liming to 10 years in prison on charges including "extraterritorial use of trade secrets of national core key technologies" under the National Security Act.
Earlier, Taiwan prosecutors sought a 14-year prison term last August for Chen, who left TSMC and moved to TEL, saying Chen received 2-nm process technology drawings and other materials filmed on mobile phones from other engineers who had worked at TSMC.
Four other individuals charged with leaking technology to Chen were sentenced to prison terms of 2 years, 3 years, and 6 years, and to 10 months with a 3-year suspended sentence, respectively. The Taiwan court also fined TEL's Taiwan branch NT$150 million (about 7.02 billion won) and ordered it to pay NT$100 million (about 4.68 billion won) to TSMC.
Taiwan prosecutors said, "This technology leak case seriously threatens the international competitiveness of Taiwan's semiconductor industry."