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Micron Chip Sales Banned In China On Patent Case (bloomberg.com)
A Chinese court temporarily banned Micron Technology chip sales, cutting the U.S. company off from the world's largest semiconductor market. The news comes from Taiwanese rival United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC). Bloomberg reports: In a patent ruling in favor of UMC, the Fuzhou Intermediate Peopleâ(TM)s Court of the Peopleâ(TM)s Republic of China issued a preliminary injunction stopping Micron from selling 26 products, including dynamic random access memory and Nand flash memory-related products, UMC said in a statement Tuesday. Micron said it hasnâ(TM)t been served with the injunction and wonâ(TM)t comment until it does.
The case is part of a broader dispute between the two companies centering on accusations that UMC acted as a conduit for the theft of Micronâ(TM)s designs in an attempt to help China grow its domestic chip industry and replace imports that rival oil in total value. A Chinese antitrust regulator is already investigating Micron and its Korean rivals, the companies have said. Local media has reported that authorities are looking into increases in chip prices.
The case is part of a broader dispute between the two companies centering on accusations that UMC acted as a conduit for the theft of Micronâ(TM)s designs in an attempt to help China grow its domestic chip industry and replace imports that rival oil in total value. A Chinese antitrust regulator is already investigating Micron and its Korean rivals, the companies have said. Local media has reported that authorities are looking into increases in chip prices.
...is exactly why - in the same way that a broken clock is right twice a day - Trump is correct to start tightening the screws on China.
Granted, it's about 30 years too late, but....
You mean their reaction to the US banning chip supplies to ZTE by banning chip imports from Micron is... what... surprising? unexpected?
If you want to be the playground bully, it pays to make sure you can hold that position...
Everything in the China is THE PEOPLE, but it's really a euphemism for THE COMMUNIST PARTY, NOT you!
THE PEOPLE!!
Taiwan should do what China did. Just make a massive donation to a planned Indonesian theme park, golf course, whatever.... just make sure the project has financial links to Trump and he'll sort out export/import bans like he did with ZTE.
turns into patent troll.
Pathetic no face no honor failures.
Five, count 'em, five â(TM)s in the summery. I wonder what the record is?
No, this is a standard protectionist MO from China. They have done this at least 4 times to micron in the last decade. I know you hate trump, but get your head putt off your ass.
Unless China govt owns UMC, I don't see how is this a positive news for China. Companies with China operations will immediately see that cost of manufacturing rising and those with manufacturing facilities in nearby (Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, to name a few) will become more competitive. Eventually the net losers are China and Micron and beneficiary is UMC.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Trump is putting tariffs on allies and creating trade wars that don't need to happen, and in reverse-optimal order of efficacy for the US economy. Ask Harley, you're a moron.
That's pretty much what they do. They're retaliating against Micron because they got caught red-handed stealing their designs from UMC in Taiwan.
The irony is that China has no domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers worth speaking of, so they'll still need to buy the equipment from American and Japanese firms like Applied Materials, LAM Research, and Tokyo Electron. Plus they're having extreme difficulty finding qualified semiconductor process engineers willing to move to China.
Plus they stole it for a fab that's still under production, so by the time they are producing chips using the stolen designs, Micron will probably already be fabbing their next design turn/feature shrink...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Now that China has blocked the its access to Micron's products, the Koreans are in a much better negotiation position in the anti-thrust investigation, not that the Chinese court system would be as corrupt or subversive as some others are..
It doesn't matter if their fab process is a bit behind the curve. They will flood the market with so many low priced alternatives to existing products that it will drive their competition out of business. Then when companies have new lithography machines to sell, Chinese manufacturers will be the only remaining buyers and will thus become cutting edge.
From cloud services to machine learning memory is the common denominator for all of these growth sectors. Any dip in Micron is a strong buy signal on my charts. YMMV.
China has no domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers worth speaking of, so they'll still need to buy the equipment from American and Japanese firms like Applied Materials, LAM Research, and Tokyo Electron
Stop selling China equipment that enable them to produce chips.
China *does have* domestic equipment makers, but the machines they produce is so lousy, even the Chinese semiconductor process engineers are avoiding those machines like a plaque .
If we stop selling the equipment to them, the Chinese have to rely on the 2nd hand market --- which means, they will be getting really antiquated technologies, at least 5 years old, (40nm node and up) which isn't going to help them.
The Great Wall of EUrope now filters out apostrophes. American websites are trying to circumvent the filter by replacing apostrophes with the trademarked lowercase letter a circumflex.
Disagree 5-10 years behind in the semiconductor game is death
And 3D nand is going out of style in 5 years anyway...
In what industry are you working? The the computing industry been stealing silicon and software IP from universities, researchers and each other since the first wafer with little regard to borders or laws. Bell Labs' C is knockoff of BCPL with adjustments to the PDP11 hardware. DEC's PDP1 was a knockoff of MIT's Whirlwind. Back then ISAs and notation was possible to protect so cosmetics adjustment were made to circumvent it.
Going forward, anything heavy silicon "developed" was some researchers' prior art that they didn't bother protecting since they got their tenure and direct grants and donations that circumvented the universities claim to the IP. And if the deans noticed, they just bribed them too. Only rule was to keep the bribe below the market value of the IP + litigation. If the required bribes went over those then they just bought the patents and copyrights from the unis.
Honestly, this how nearly all tech (high or low, silicon or otherwise) industries and academia work. Literally, it's the modern western business model for research. What? Did you think all those philanthropist were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts?
You Anglosaxons would never treat anybody with contempt. You would never have brutish and corrupt allies like the Saudis. And you would never drop entire nations into civil war, such as Iraq and Syria.
Surely not.
The Chinese steal the technology and then claim it as their own, but then to add injury they prohibit the creator of the technology from selling their product.
People. The Chinese are NOT morally driven by ANY religion. They have no moral compass. Put aside the perceptions that you have of the Chinese from television shows that you have watched as that is NOT Communist China, and just look at how they treat the elderly. If you are old and sick it is your time to die. There is no compassion or care as you are no longer a contributing member to the party.
Stealing is not wrong to them. What did you use to define right and wrong? The Bible? Koran? or perhaps a Constitution. If you used a document created by a government, and that document tells you that stealing, murder, and lying are to be not to be avoided and should actually be done for the good of the country then you have my pity, and you are probably North Korean, Chinese, Iranian,or Russian.
Where is the evidence of this?