Ex-Samsung exec charged with stealing trade secrets

Article content material

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean prosecutors have arrested and indicted a former govt of Samsung Electronics suspected of stealing commerce secrets and techniques whereas making an attempt to determine a copycat laptop chip plant in China.

Article content material

The Suwon District Prosecutors’ Workplace mentioned Monday that the unnamed 65-year-old unlawfully obtained Samsung’s manufacturing unit blueprints and clean-room designs from 2018 and 2019 whereas making an attempt, unsuccessfully, to copy a chip manufacturing unit within the Chinese language metropolis of Xi’an, close to the place Samsung operates a plant.

Article content material

The expertise allegedly stolen by the person’s China-based firm would have been value at the least 300 billion received ($233 million) for Samsung, prosecutors mentioned. They charged six individuals employed by the person with “energetic participation” within the tech theft.

South Korea is very delicate to breaches of applied sciences associated to semiconductors, which accounted for almost 17% of its whole exports in 2022. Samsung, the world’s largest producer of laptop reminiscence chips, didn’t instantly touch upon the fees.

Article content material

In an announcement, prosecutors described the arrested man as an “undisputed high home skilled in semiconductor manufacturing.” After an 18-year profession at Samsung he held govt roles for a decade at SK Hynix, one other main South Korean chip maker which trails Samsung within the reminiscence chip market.

The person later created chip manufacturing firms in China and Singapore with the backing of Chinese language and Taiwanese traders and lured greater than 200 chip specialists from Samsung and Hynix with greater pay earlier than arranging to smuggle out essential applied sciences from Samsung, prosecutors mentioned.

The manufacturing secrets and techniques allegedly taken from Samsung included processing blueprints and “primary engineering information” for designing clean-room environments to forestall contamination throughout semiconductor manufacturing, which prosecutors described as “core nationwide applied sciences.”

“The suspect … tried to duplicate a whole (Samsung) manufacturing unit to fabricate and mass-produce semiconductors in China,” mentioned the prosecutors’ workplace, who described his crime as incomparable in harm and scale to earlier theft instances.

It mentioned South Korea’s semiconductor trade would have been “irreversibly broken” and the nation’s safety pursuits enormously compromised if the manufacturing unit was really constructed and produced chips much like Samsung’s merchandise.