18 Months In Prison For Making iPad 2 Cases

decora writes "Loretta Chao of the The Wall Street Journal reports on three people in China who were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months in prison for a plot to make iPad 2 protective cases before the tablet's official release. The plan allegedly involved R&D man Lin Kecheng of Hon Hai Precision Industry Company (FoxConn) selling image data to Hou Pengna, who then passed it to Xiao Chengsong, a manager at MacTop. The charges? One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.' The decision was handed down by the Shenzen Baoan People's Court on June 16."

Comments

Not quite.

[Narcogen]

This is not China taking IP seriously as a matter of principle.

This is China taking the needs of Foxconn seriously, and in this case, Foxconn's need is to demonstrate to its clients that it can be trusted with their sensitive commercial materials, such as the specifications of as-yet-unreleased products.

What's with the trolling, slashdot?

[YesIAmAScript]

These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.

Why make it out like they are victims?

They didn't get time in prison for making iPad 2 cases, but instead for stealing the secrets necessary to make them before the iPad 2 even came out.

Re:nothing new

[icebraining]

We're now stuck in this utterly false mindset that the only way to get anything done is to throw money at some magnificent private company to do badly what we've lost the power to do ourselves. Need to talk to someone? Your voice and a knock on the door is no longer good enough. Nor a letter. Nor building your own radio set. Nor even an open access Internet. No, that all requires too much thinking. Now you're tempted to get a shiny ready-made throwaway toy built at a cost which could only be achieved by choosing abused labour in an oppressive country.

Oh please. Even letters were always dependent on some organization to deliver them. Ditto for the "open Internet". And the majority of people never built their own radio set.
People didn't change, technology did.

And that abused labour has seen their wages raise in the double digits per year. If it wasn't for their manufacturing, they'd still live in an oppressive country, but living in even worse conditions.

Only One Guy Got 18 There Were Also Monetary Fines

[eldavojohn]

From my submission last week:

"Almost two months ago three individuals were charged with selling the designs of Apple's latest tablet to Maita Electronics for 200,000 yuan (about $30,857.60 USD). They have now been sentenced in Shenzhen City: 'Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him 150,000 yuan ($23,000) for buying the design from two Foxconn workers ... Foxconn employee Lin Kecheng, was sentenced to 14 months and fined 100,000 yuan, while another worker identified as Hou Pengna was given a two-year sentence suspended for one year and fined 30,000 yuan. All three were convicted of the crime of violating commercial secrets.'"

And only one was sentenced to 18 months ... unless the associated press article I quoted was wrong.