TSMC Leak Case: Two Former Engineers Sentenced to 10 and 6 Years in Prison

Odaily Odaily News According to reports from Taiwan, China, four former TSMC engineers, Chen Li-ming, Wu Bing-jun, Ge Yi-ping, and Chen Wei-jie, were found guilty of stealing and leaking confidential data, including information on the 2-nanometer process. The Taiwan Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced Chen Li-ming to 10 years, Wu Bing-jun to 3 years, Ge Yi-ping to 2 years, and Chen Wei-jie to 6 years in prison in the first instance. Chen Li-ming and Chen Wei-jie filed appeals, but the Taiwan Supreme Court rejected their appeals on the 30th, and the two will be taken directly into custody to serve their sentences.

According to reports, Wu Bing-jun and Ge Yi-ping did not appeal after the first-instance verdict, and the prosecutor also did not appeal, so their sentences were finalized. Chen Li-ming, originally a yield enhancement engineer at TSMC's Fab 12, left the company to work in the marketing department of Tokyo Electron Limited, a supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to TSMC. To prove his performance and help Tokyo Electron secure more equipment supply positions in TSMC's advanced process nodes, he repeatedly leveraged his former colleagues' relationships with Wu, Ge, and Chen, asking the three to photograph TSMC's confidential files. The four engineers used the work laptops of the engineers who were still employed at TSMC to access confidential files for Chen Li-ming to photograph or which were photographed and sent to him. (Global Times)