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

According to reports from Taiwan, 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 related to 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 appealed, but the Supreme Court of Taiwan rejected the appeals on the 30th, and both will be sent directly to prison for execution of their sentences.

The report states that Wu Bing-jun and Ge Yi-ping did not appeal after the first-instance verdict, and the prosecutor also did not file an appeal. Therefore, their sentences were finalized first. Chen Li-ming was originally a yield improvement engineer at TSMC's Fab 12. After leaving TSMC, he joined the marketing department of Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL), a TSMC semiconductor manufacturing equipment supplier. In an effort to perform well and help TEL secure more equipment supply positions in TSMC's advanced process nodes, he repeatedly leveraged his old collegial ties with Wu, Ge, and Chen, asking them to photograph TSMC's confidential files. The four engineers accessed confidential files through the work laptops of the engineers still employed at TSMC, either opening them for Chen Li-ming to photograph or taking photos themselves and sending them to Chen Li-ming. (Global Times)