Taiwan’s UMC to Aid U.S. Pursuit of Chinese Firm for Theft
- United Microelectronics admits stealing from Idaho’s Micron
- Plea deal leaves China’s Fujian Jinhua as main U.S. defendant
Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. pledged “substantial assistance” to the U.S. in a high-profile trade-secrets prosecution of Chinese chipmaker Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co.
UMC pleaded guilty Wednesday in San Francisco federal court in a deal with U.S. prosecutors, who agreed to drop serious charges of economic espionage and conspiracy for the alleged theft of proprietary information from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. UMC instead admitted to trade-secret theft and agreed to pay a $60 million fine.
The guilty plea resolves one piece of a complicated, international prosecution of an allegedly illegal transfer of Micron’s memory design in a chip manufacturing deal between Taiwan-based UMC and Jinjiang-based Fujian Jinhua. But it also leaves key questions unanswered.
The case was the first filed under the Trump administration’s “China Initiative,” a Justice Department program aimed at prioritizing trade-theft cases and litigating them as quickly as possible. With UMC removed as a defendant, China becomes the target as tension with the West is aggravated by issues including Beijing’s hacking and control of key technologies, its handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, tightening grip over Hong Kong and treatment of Muslim Uighurs.