Bloomberg News and other outlets reported on the 27th that the Taiwan Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced engineer Chen Li-ming, who previously worked at Tokyo Electron, to 10 years. Four other defendants in the case received sentences of up to six years, and one woman was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for three years.
Applying a dual-liability provision, the court also fined Tokyo Electron’s Taiwan unit 150 million New Taiwan dollars (about 7 billion won).
Prosecutors said Chen recruited two TSMC employees and obtained confidential drawings related to the company’s next-generation 2-nanometer process technology. The employees accessed the company’s internal network while working from home, photographed the materials with mobile phones and passed them along. Authorities said the leaked materials totaled about 1,000 pages.
The ruling was seen as reflecting Taiwan authorities’ push to strengthen protection of semiconductor technology, a core foundation of the global artificial intelligence industry.
Taiwan has maintained a high level of vigilance over intellectual property leaks, stepping up monitoring not only of activity linked to China, which is seeking to build up its own semiconductor industry, but also of existing partners.
In early 2025, Taiwan authorities began investigating whether China’s largest foundry, SMIC, illegally recruited local engineers to obtain advanced technology.
Last year, prosecutors also searched the home of a former TSMC executive after allegations of a technology leak surfaced following the executive’s move to Intel.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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