Kaohsiung District Office Prosecutors coordinated Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) to probe the trade secret theft of Chipbond(頎邦) Technology Corporation has come to an end. Nine former managers of the Hsin Bao(欣寶) Corporation were charged for technology theft, breach of trust and embezzlement. Another former engineering department manager was indicted for committing an unauthorized reproduction, usage trade secret under Trade Secret Act and breaching of fiduciary duty under Penal Code.  Considering great commercial interests lost and diminishing criminal incentive, the prosecutor asked the court that the defendants should be fined appropriately as well.

Evidence collected in an investigation showed that Chipbond Corporation and JMC Electronics Corporation both produce Chip on Film. Their technique of production is different, however, the competition is very intensive in the market. In May 2003, former manager Lee and deputy manager Huang of Hsin Bao found the company would be acquired by Chipbond on August 1 that year. After the acquisition, the managers worried that they would lose control of the Hsin Bao factory. As a result, they had passed information on key technologies “Fine Pitch Enhanced NewEtching” developed by Hsin Bao to its rival, JMC Electronics Corporation. Lee and Huang also poached former Chipbond Corporation employees to JMC Electronics Corporation in order to obtain trade secrets and key technology information

Chen and other managers downloaded the trade secret mentioned above from company’s servers prior to resigning from Chipbond. The files then were stored in personal notebook, cloud database, usb flash drive or e-mail and transferred to intended destination later. Chen and other managers then joined JMC company with the trade secret.

The prosecutor also found that manager Shih, without authorization from Chipbond, resigned from Chipbond on 30 June 2013 and downloaded confidential files the next day on 1 July 2013. The number of files is up to 25,000 and the size is up to 3.07GB.

Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office urge the public to respect others’ intellectual property, high-tech information and trade secrets, and are dedicate to establishing a fair competition environment for people to operate business within Kaohsiung City.