Tokyo Electron Says Former Employee Involved in TSMC Trade Theft Case
A former employee of Tokyo Electron, a leading semiconductor manufacturing equipment company, was involved in the recent theft of trade secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Tokyo Electron said Aug. 7.
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The Japanese firm said the employee worked for its subsidiary in Taiwan, Tokyo Electron Taiwan Ltd. “As of now, based upon the findings of our internal investigation, we have not confirmed any evidence of the respective confidential information shared to any third parties,” the company said. “As the case is now under judicial review, we are unable to provide further details at this time.”
The Taiwan High Prosecutors Office said Taiwan detained multiple people late last month after a TSMC internal investigation revealed that former and current employees allegedly stole sensitive chip technology (see 2508050043 and 2508060022).
Tokyo Electron said it’s “unwavering in our commitment to the highest standards of legal compliance and ethical conduct,” and that it's taken “strict disciplinary action and dismissed the personnel involved who worked at [the] Taiwan subsidiary.” The company said it’s cooperating with authorities.
The former Tokyo Electron employee allegedly met a TSMC engineer at a cafe and asked the engineer to “display confidential data on a laptop and took numerous photos of the information,” according to Japanese news outlet Nippon.com, which cited reporting from Taiwanese newspaper United Daily News. The information reportedly involved “cutting-edge chips with a circuit line width of 2 nanometers, which the Taiwanese company plans to start mass producing as early as this year.”