Seven ex-Samsung employees were found guilty and jailed for illegally obtaining and sharing chip-related technology with companies based in China. Before proceeding, you should know that SEMES Co. is a Samsung subsidiary that produces equipment used in chipset and display manufacturing process.
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The Suwon District Court sentenced a former researcher of SEMES to four years in prison for illegally obtaining technologies related to semiconductor cleaning equipment and using those technologies to build similar tools destined for exports to China.
In addition to this, a company that was founded by the researcher to produce semiconductor cleaning equipment using SEMES technology was fined 1 billion won, or roughly $768,000, by the Suwon District Court, according to the ruling released on Monday.
Furthermore, six other ex-employees of SEMES were also found guilty of involvement in the technology theft and received sentences of up to 2½ years in prison. As per the WSJ report, a Samsung spokeswoman referred questions for comment to the subsidiary, while lawyers representing the seven weren’t disclosed by the court.
According to the report, the information obtained by the ex-employees included equipment-design blueprints and a list of related components extracted through photos and misappropriated files from 2018 to 2020. Notably, some stolen info involved technologies covered by South Korean laws protecting “national core technologies.”
“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,” the court ruling read.
Using the stolen information, the individuals created 24 semiconductor cleaning equipment blueprints and sold 14 cleaning machines to competing Chinese firms and a Chinese research institute whose names were withheld, according to the court ruling.
Compared to the US, South Korea, and Taiwan, China is years behind in producing advanced semiconductors. The US export restrictions have left the Chinese chip industry without essential foreign technologies. China has spent billions building up its own semiconductor companies.
