HTC Executives Arrested Over Leaked Trade Secrets

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HTC Executives Arrested Over Leaked Trade Secrets

Posted by samzenpus on Monday September 2, 2013 @03:58AM from the was-that-wrong? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Three HTC executives have been arrested on suspicion of leaking corporate secrets. From the article: Taipei prosecutors confirmed that HTC vice president of product design Thomas Chien, research and development director Wu Chien-Hung and senior manager of design and innovation Justin Huang were arrested on Friday. Mr Chien and Mr Chien-Hung remain in custody, while Mr Huang was released on bail, prosecutors office spokesman Mou Hsin Huang said. The executives were also accused of making false commission fee claims totaling around T$10m ($221,000). No further details about the allegations were immediately available.'"

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and again... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:05 · Score: 0, Offtopic

If corporations wrong the plebeian, regular people, they don't even get a smack on the wrist. Banks foreclosed on thousands of homes with bad or no paperwork and they have hardly been fined. Bad foreclosures are lives ruined.
But if do something like steal secrets from a fellow corporation and go to jail.
This country is SCREWED until corporations are under control.
1. Re:and again... by WilliamGeorge · 2013-09-02 04:09 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  "This country is SCREWED until corporations are under control."
  You are aware this happened in Taiwan, right? I mean the location (Taipei, a city there) is named right in the first part of the summary... you don't even have to RTFA...
  
  --
  William George
2. Re:and again... by binarylarry · 2013-09-02 04:14 · Score: 2
  
  This country is SCREWED until literacy is common place.
  
  --
  Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
3. Re:and again... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  This country is SCREWED until literacy is common place.
  
  If you are going to pick on someone else's reading skills, then your English skills need to be better. The word is "commonplace". It's not two words.
4. Re:and again... by sydneyfong · 2013-09-02 04:34 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Don't worry. The OP's rant probably applies to most places.
  
  --
  Don't quote me on this.
5. Re:and again... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 05:00 · Score: 0
  
  You never heard of adjusting your writing style for emphasis?
  Simple sentences are not always the most appropriate. Your version was a stand-alone statement, mine was a comment on the post to which I was replying.
6. Re:and again... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 07:45 · Score: 0
  
  "If corporations wrong the plebeian, regular people,"
  
  I love it when people use a big word, and then immediately define it in the same sentence to really show off how intellectual they are. Personally, I would have gone with: hoi polloi, the masses; the common people. Despite it being derogatory. After all, I wouldn't actually know the term to that depth.
7. Re:and again... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 08:29 · Score: 0
  
  I suppose I should not respond to a post about spell/grammar/etc problems as I am pretty miserable typer meself but I also noticed that the spellcheckers are getting worse and worse while getting more and more active in replacing what I typed with what they think I meant. This got really annoying after I moved with part of my /. and other off work posting into tablet&smartphone domain - I really miss the times when the spell-checking algos in my t39 were not silly bastards 'knowing' it all better.I could have understood this if words I try to type were not in dictionary but they often are and the bloody spellchecker changes them because of ??? This is questionable already at words that are not in dictionary - I would prefer to be asked nicely then, especially as big part of my posting contains technical jargon that is not known to bloody spellchecker and which I do not intend to put in my private dictionary but still want to use. I guess if the fucking phone knows it all better then it should pay taxes and alimony itself too and leave me alone.
8. Re:and again... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 09:52 · Score: 0
  
  Moranic is a perfectly cromulent word.
What did they steal? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-09-02 04:06 · Score: 3, Funny

How much are the secrets of going into a surprisingly steep decline worth these days?
1. Re:What did they steal? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:19 · Score: 0
  
  Zero. It's not like HTC or any Android phone company has any special design anyway. Except the appearance but you wouldn't need IQ 50 to remember that.
2. Re:What did they steal? by binarylarry · 2013-09-02 05:03 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, "special design" has been a common issue with Android phones. OEM custom firmware like Sense, TouchWiz, etc. has typically been awful UX-wise compared to stock Android.
  
  --
  Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
3. Re:What did they steal? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 05:09 · Score: 0
  
  I like my HTC One and by sheer coincidence it matches my macbook pro almost exactly.
4. Re:What did they steal? by girlintraining · 2013-09-02 05:22 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  How much are the secrets of going into a surprisingly steep decline worth these days?
  Considering the expansive definition of what a "trade secret" is these days, it could be grandma's tuna cassarole recipe that the secretary shared. Afterall, maybe someone decided to make a restaurant based on it, and thus it was supposed to be a secret recipe and... you know, the recipe was actually a wiccan spell to summon the lesser demon of stupidity; Litigatus.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
5. Re:What did they steal? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  I disagree. Sense 5 is pretty nice and smooth on HTC One.
Them names. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:10 · Score: 0

Chien, Huang, Chien-Hung, Hsin Huang... is that some kind of joke or do they all share a parent ?
1. Re:Them names. by DeathToBill · 2013-09-02 04:17 · Score: 2
  
  That's right. Everyone in Germany called Schmidt shares a parent, everyone from Wales called Jones shares a parent and everyone in the USA called Johnson shares a parent. It's the same phenomenon.
  
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2. Re:Them names. by mwvdlee · 2013-09-02 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  Johnson, Wilson, Jackson, Anderson... is that some kind of joke or do they all share a parent?
  
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3. Re:Them names. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:27 · Score: 0
  
  I don't know. The prosecution spokesperson, Mou Hsin Huang, didn't say.
4. Re:Them names. by Jmc23 · 2013-09-02 04:29 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Same parent? Don't be ridiculous.
  It's just coincidence that all were fathered by their sons traveling back in time.
  
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  Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
5. Re:Them names. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:29 · Score: 0
  
  Damn... you'd already mentioned Hsin Huang. I missed it amongst all the Chiens and Huangs. Sorry about that.
6. Re:Them names. by Zontar+The+Mindless · 2013-09-02 05:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  They all have different family names.
  Thomas Chien: family name is "Chien"
  Wu Chien-Hung: family name is "Wu"
  Justin Huang: family name is "Huang"
  Mou Hsin Huang: family name is "Mou"
  In Chinese, the family name is traditionally given first. Chinese who live in or frequently visit Western countries, or who often deal with Western visitors, often adopt Western given names for the convenience of people who don't speak Chinese. In such cases, they place the family name last, like most Westerners do, since this is what most Westerners expect. (My fiancée does this. And no, I'm not giving you either version of her name. :P)
  Example: The famous Hong Kong actor Chan Gong-sang is better is known to English speakers as Jackie Chan. His family name is Chan.
  Not sure what happens when Jackie visits Hungary, though. ;)
  
  --
  Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
7. Re:Them names. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 05:48 · Score: 0
  
  Johnson, Cox, Boner, Taft
8. Re:Them names. by Miamicanes · 2013-09-02 06:37 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  It looks like the article got the guy's name backwards. In Chinese, your family name comes first. So, "Wu Chien-Huang" would be properly westernized as "Mr. Wu". If, in fact, his family name were "Chien-Huang", is proper Romanized representation would be "Chien-Huang Wu".
  Complicating the westernization of Chinese names, Chinese relies heavily upon inflection (so much so, that the various inflections are called "tones"). Think of the various ways you can say "Merry Christmas" to someone, expressing the entire range of feelings from "Greetings! I hope you're enjoying your holiday season" to "Fuck you, eat shit, and die!" using the same two words, depending upon how you say them.
  The net result is that tens of thousands of name-syllables, represented by distinct characters in Chinese, get collapsed down to just a few hundred Roman letter sequences. Under the BEST circumstances (properly rendered into canonical Pinyin, tone accents and all), each syllable still has an ambiguity of ~2.5 characters per syllable (ie, each syllable, like "Wu", "Chien", or "Huang" could be one of 2 or 3 different Chinese characters). Strip away the accents & take liberties with the phonetics, and it's more like 5-20 per syllable. But wait... it gets worse. Just about every word in Chinese ALSO has multiple homonyms -- words that are pronounced the same, but written differently. Think, "to, too, two".
  So... given only an ASCII-Romanized representation of a name like "Wu Chien-Huang", you can reasonably guess that Mr. Wu's actual name is one of approximately 20-30 possibilities. Maybe as few as a dozen, if you spend some time researching his family tree and can get the family name unambiguously nailed down to one or two possibilities (ie, figuring out whether it's "///Wu///", or "***Wu***"). But without actually seeing it written in proper Chinese, or asking his mother, or someone who saw his name written in proper Chinese at some point in time), NOBODY could ever be 100% sure what name his mother intended him to have.
9. Re:Them names. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 16:05 · Score: 0
  
  No but they might be related to Som Ting Wong, Wei Tu Lo and Ho Lee Fuk.
10. Re:Them names. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 20:45 · Score: 0
  
  Not sure what happens when Jackie visits Hungary, though. ;)
  
  He kicks ass, of course :)
This is Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:21 · Score: 0

We are ignorant. And smug. And arrogant. And did I mention ignorant?
1. Re:This is Slashdot by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-02 06:43 · Score: 2
  
  Didn't even work that into a Monty Python Spanish Inquisition reference? Lame. We expect better of Slashdot trolls.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Run for your lives by gmuslera · 2013-09-02 04:22 · Score: 3, Funny

Any person that work for a non US company storing in the "cloud" internal data (even if is sending a presentation in a private mail, or talking about it in skype) is in fact leaking trade secrets, and probably being target for jail with this kind of ruling. Browsing in social sites from a machine or in the open internet in general holding whatever could be seen as trade secret is risky at the very least.
1. Re:Run for your lives by hraponssi · 2013-09-02 11:04 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah they probably sent an email to someone who uses Gmail, or maybe they used a HTC Android phone for anything. Same result, all your data (and the famous meta-data) leaked right there. Jail-time!
Trade secrets? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:24 · Score: 0

I thought patents are supposed to encourage people to reveal these secrets. Oh, that's right, patents are useless and corporations and individuals alike still keep anything useful a secret and it still gets protected by trade secret laws. Patents only protect against independent invention (of obvious ideas).
1. Re:Trade secrets? by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-09-02 05:53 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, the point of trade secrets is that you keep them secret, but it's your job to do so, not the public's. Having criminal laws that punish leaking of trade secrets has to be one of the worst types of fascist corporatism. If the patent system ever had any merit, even in theory, then trade secret laws would work against patents. That might even be a legal theory that could be used to defeat such laws in the US.
  Civil liability is, of course, entirely reasonable.
  
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serious by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:27 · Score: 0

What's that, like, leaking personal secrets?
What's so special? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 04:55 · Score: 0

I saw this story on the firehose and was hoping it would get downvoted into oblivion.
What's so special about this story other than the fact it involves a tech company?
Come on, editors, you can do better!!! Whatever happened to Making The Workd's Biggest Strategy Game?? (no, I'm not the sumitter)
Golden Parachute? by anomaly65 · 2013-09-02 05:26 · Score: 2

Perhaps this is a new corporate version of an exit clause for the "golden parachute" so many execs have :-)
I can imagine the secrets -- power button and volume rocker location: left, right, or top of the case.....
1. Re:Golden Parachute? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-02 09:39 · Score: 0
  
  No Chute for you, but please enjoy the Golden ParaShower on your way out.
Corporations under control: not an option. by foma84 · 2013-09-02 09:01 · Score: 1

I hope you realize that there is no chance of "corporations under control" in the capitalistic ruleset.
HTC by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-04 04:04 · Score: 0

Hot Trade Commodity