Chinese Chip Firm Fujian Jinhua Denies Stealing IP From Micron (reuters.com)

Last Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced charges against Chinese state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and privately owned United Microelectronics Corporation of Taiwan for stealing an estimated $8.75 billion worth of trade secrets from U.S. semiconductor giant Micron. On Saturday, Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co denied the charges. "Behavior to steal another firm's technology does not exist," Fujian Jinhua said in a statement. "Micron regards the development of Fujian Jinhua as a threat and adopts various means to hamper and destroy the development of Fujian Jinhua." The company "always attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights," Fujian Jinhua added. Reuters reports: The move to block Fujian Jinhua escalated what until now had been a business dispute into the realm of an international trade conflict between the United States and China. The world's top two economies are already waging a tariff war over their trade disputes, with U.S. duties in place on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Chinese duties on $110 billion of U.S. goods. The U.S. moves could seriously damage the ambitions of Fujian Jinhua, a firm of strategic importance to China.

Comments

Not worth the headline

[volodymyrbiryuk]

Does anyone admit anything these days?

The actual indictment

[goombah99]

The indictment alleges conspiracy to steal secrets. Which is slightly different than actually having stolen secrets. Thus the company needs to actually dispute this by saying "we didn't plan to steal secrets" or "the stolen secrets we received were not known to be stolen by us". Simply saying they didn't steal the secrets isn't a denial.

the path here is indirect and while showing the pattern of a conspiracy has many layers of companies fronting this operation. It's not entirely unlike how Uber ended up with Waymo desgins

from the primary source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr...

According to the indictment, the defendants were engaged in a conspiracy to steal the trade secrets of Micron Technology, Inc. (Micron), a leader in the global semiconductor industry specializing in the advanced research, development, and manufacturing of memory products, including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). DRAM is a leading-edge memory storage device used in computer electronics. Micron is the only United States-based company that manufactures DRAM. According to the indictment, Micron maintains a significant competitive advantage in this field due in large part from its intellectual property, including its trade secrets that include detailed, confidential information pertaining to the design, development, and manufacturing of advanced DRAM products.

Prior to the events described in the indictment, the PRC did not possess DRAM technology, and the Central Government and State Council of the PRC publicly identified the development of DRAM and other microelectronics technology as a national economic priority. The criminal defendants are United Microelectronics Corporation (“UMC”), a Taiwan semiconductor foundry; Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, Co., Ltd. (“Jinhua'”), a state-owned enterprise of the PRC; and three Taiwan nationals: Chen Zhengkun, a.k.a. Stephen Chen, age 55; He Jianting, a.k.a. J.T. Ho, age 42; and Wang Yungming, a.k.a. Kenny Wang, age 44. UMC is a publicly listed semiconductor foundry company traded on the New York Stock Exchange; is headquartered in Taiwan; and has offices worldwide, including in Sunnyvale, California. UMC mass produces integrated-circuit logic products based on designs and technology developed and provided by its customers. Jinhua is a state-owned enterprise of the PRC, funded entirely by the Chinese government, and established in February 2016 for the sole purpose of designing, developing, and manufacturing DRAM.

According to the indictment, Chen was a General Manager and Chairman of an electronics corporation that Micron acquired in 2013. Chen then became the president of a Micron subsidiary in Taiwan, Micron Memory Taiwan (“MMT”), responsible for manufacturing at least one of Micron’s DRAM chips. Chen resigned from MMT in July 2015 and began working at UMC almost immediately. While at UMC, Chen arranged a cooperation agreement between UMC and Fujian Jinhua whereby, with funding from Fujian Jinhua, UMC would transfer DRAM technology to Fujian Jinhua to mass-produce. The technology would be jointly shared by both UMC and Fujian Jinhua. Chen later became the President of Jinhua and was put in charge of its DRAM production facility.

While at UMC, Chen recruited numerous MMT employees, including Ho and Wang, to join him at UMC. Prior to leaving MMT, Ho and Wang both stole and brought to UMC several Micron trade secrets related to the design and manufacture of DRAM. Wang downloaded over 900 Micron confidential and proprietary files before he left MMT and stored them on USB external hard drives or in personal cloud storage, from where he could access the technology while working at UMC.