7 Former Samsung Employees Jailed for Stealing Chip Secrets for China – A South Korean court has found seven former Samsung employees guilty of stealing semiconductor technology and transferring it to Chinese entities. According to The Wall Street Journal, all seven former employees were employed by Samsung Electronics subsidiary SEMES Co. Ltd., Korea’s largest semiconductor and display equipment manufacturer.
The technology stolen includes equipment design drawings and component inventories retrieved from images the workers “misappropriated” from files between 2018 and 2020. The information about semiconductor cleaning equipment is classified as “national core technologies” under South Korean law.
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One of those convicted goes by the surname Nam and worked as a researcher at SEMES. They used the stolen information to establish a competitor company that would manufacture cleaning equipment using the stolen SEMES technology. Nam’s company earned $59.8 million from the sale of 14 cleaning machines to Chinese firms and a Chinese research institute.
Nam also formed a joint venture with a Chinese company in 2020 and transmitted the technology, which included plans for 24 semiconductor cleaning machines. The other six former workers all assisted in the theft of the technology in exchange for stock in this joint venture.
The Suwon District Court sentenced Nam to four years in prison and the other six offenders to up to two and a half years in prison this week. Nam’s company was also fined around $768,000 for illegally utilizing SEMES technology.
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As part of its decision, the court stated: “If such crimes are punished lightly, companies will not have an incentive to devote long periods of time and resources to technology development. It will also create an outcome where competing foreign firms easily steal technology that Korean companies have built up with great effort under the guise of talent recruitment.”
