Ex-TSMC engineer gets 10-year sentence in tech leak case

Taipei, April 27 (CNA) A former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) engineer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the leak of trade secrets involving the company's advanced 2-nanometer process, a court ruled Monday.

The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court found Chen Li-ming (陳力銘) guilty of violating the National Security Act and of other offenses related to the unauthorized acquisition and use of Taiwan's "national core key technologies." The ruling can be appealed.

The case marks the first involving a corporate entity under the National Security Act, which is related to national core key technologies.

Two other TSMC engineers, Wu Ping-chun (吳秉駿) and Ko Yi-ping (戈一平), were sentenced to three and two years in prison, respectively, while another employee, Chen Wei-chieh (陳韋傑), received a six-year sentence.

A fourth defendant, Lu Yi-yin (盧怡尹), was given a 10-month suspended sentence and fined NT$1 million (US$31,000). She is an employee of Tokyo Electron Taiwan, the company to which the TSMC trade secrets were leaked.

Tokyo Electron Taiwan, a TSMC equipment supplier, was fined NT$150 million, which may be suspended if it pays NT$100 million in compensation to TSMC and NT$50 million to the treasury, according to the court ruling.

Chen, who previously worked in a yield engineering unit at TSMC's Fab 12, joined Tokyo Electron Taiwan's marketing division after leaving the chipmaker, prosecutors from the Intellectual Property Branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office said.

Between the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2025, Chen repeatedly solicited confidential technical information from Wu and Ko, who were still employed at TSMC, in a bid to help Tokyo Electron secure more equipment supply positions for TSMC's advanced process nodes.

The information, including trade secrets related to etching equipment used in 2nm production, was photographed and reproduced to allow Tokyo Electron to evaluate and improve its equipment performance, prosecutors said.

TSMC reported the case to authorities on July 8 last year after detecting irregularities through an internal investigation, according to an earlier statement. Prosecutors then investigated the matter between July 25 and 28 and obtained court approval to detain Chen, Wu, and Ko incommunicado.

The three suspects were indicted in August on charges including theft of trade secrets and extraterritorial use of national core technologies. Prosecutors sought prison terms of 14 years, nine years, and seven years for Chen, Wu and Ko, respectively.

Prosecutors later determined that Tokyo Electron Taiwan failed to exercise adequate supervision over Chen and did not take sufficient measures to prevent violations of the law, and they therefore pursued corporate criminal liability under the National Security Act, seeking a fine of NT$120 million against the company.

Investigators also found that the company's cloud storage still contained TSMC's trade secret materials, including integrated circuit manufacturing technologies below the 14-nanometer node and related equipment and chemical processes.

Tokyo Electron, Japan's largest semiconductor equipment maker and TSMC's major Japanese supplier, said in a statement issued after the indictments last year that it had found no evidence that TSMC's 2nm technology had been leaked to third parties, and stressed that it does not tolerate violations of the law or ethical standards.

TSMC has said it maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward trade secret violations and pledged to strengthen internal controls to safeguard its technological advantage.

Additional charges were filed in January against Chen, Chen Wei-chieh, Tokyo Electron Taiwan, and Lu, who was accused of destroying evidence.