Ex-Worker at Tokyo Electron Taiwan Unit Guilty of Info Theft

Taipei, April 27 (Jiji Press)–A Taiwanese court on Monday sentenced a former employee of Tokyo Electron Ltd.’s Taiwan unit to 10 years in prison for stealing secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chip foundry. The court also imposed a fine of 150 million Taiwan dollars on the subsidiary of the Japanese chipmaking equipment manufacturer. The defendant, Chen Li-ming, an engineer, moved from TSMC to the Tokyo Electron unit to take charge of sales of semiconductor-manufacturing devices and was fired last year after the theft came to light. According to the ruling, Chen obtained classified information on advanced semiconductors from 2023 to 2025 in violation of Taiwan’s security law. The prosecution claimed that Chen collected the information to improve manufacturing devices and sell them to TSMC. According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, the ruling was the first since the security law was revised in 2022 to protect Taiwan’s core technologies. Tokyo Electron said in a statement that the ruling did not find “any organizational involvement” by the Japanese company or the subsidiary or “any external leakage of the relevant confidential information.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]