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US Accuses China, Taiwan Firms With Stealing Secrets From Chip Giant Micron (yahoo.com)
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced charges Thursday against Chinese and Taiwan companies for theft of an estimate $8.75 billion worth of trade secrets from US semiconductor giant Micron. From a report: Sessions said the case was the latest in a series that are part of a state-backed program by Beijing to steal US industrial and commercial secrets. "Taken together, these cases and many others like them paint a grim picture of a country bent on stealing its way up the ladder of economic development and doing so at American expense," Session said. "This behavior is illegal. It is wrong. It is a threat to our national security. And it must stop." The indictment released in the US district court in San Jose, California alleges that Chinese state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and privately owned United Microelectronics Corporation of Taiwan, along with three UMC executives, conspired to steal Micron trade secrets to help UMC and Fujian Jinhua develop DRAM chips used in many computer processors. It said the three Taiwanese men -- Stephen Chen Zhengkun, He Jianting and Kenny Wang Yungming -- all previously worked at Micron and stole its technology when they joined UMC with the express purpose of transferring it to Fujian Jinhua, a two-year-old firm. Chen was originally a top executive at Micron, then moved to lead UMC, and subsequently became president of Fujian Jinhua.
The US itself built its industry by stealing from others, massively. Without that, the US today would be just another Mexico.
If you are caught stealing trade secrets from a company, you can be sued for damages in civil court. Now if you develop those secrets independently, you're fine. If the company somehow publicly discloses a secret, then it's fair game as well.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
LOL, they were caught red -handed. Here's some background from last summer for those obviously not following the story.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-chips-theft.html
Patents are indeed designed to provide strong enforcableblity advantages over trade secrets, plus advance the state of the art by publicly revealing your secret sauce. Worked wonders in Silicon Valley, e.g. company A would develop invention X, company B would realized X could be vastly improved with invention Y, they'd cross license and both and their customers would benefit.
But that'st not to say that trade secrets can't be enforced. Sure, if stealing company C were to broadcast to the wide world the secrets, they've lost their status as such, but why would they do that, instead of gaining advantage by keeping them secret inside the company? The theft of them is of course actionable, Micron has been suing these companies and I think individuals, and now the DoJ has decided the case has merit and is serious enough for them to step in.
Which will make things very sticky for UMC and any of the relevant employees in Taiwan, since they have the rule of law there, unlike the PRC. We can also enforce all sorts of penalties starting from the exit from the border of the PRC, and go further if the PRC thumbs their nose at us if the chips produced using these trade secrets are only used for the internal market.
Ultimately we really should revoke both the PRC's membership in the WTO and their Most Favored Nation Status, if they're not willing to play by the rules established for those, especially now that they're not really a developing nation. The American hating whataboutists should consider that acceptable behavior changes as you make such a transition.