Taiwan's Intellectual Property and Commercial Court in New Taipei City on Monday sentenced five defendants to prison terms of up to 10 years for stealing trade secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and fined the local unit of Japan's Tokyo Electron $5 million, closing one of the island's highest-profile prosecutions of chip-technology theft.
The ruling, brought under Taiwan's National Security Act, follows an August 2025 indictment alleging the defendants unlawfully obtained TSMC's chip-manufacturing know-how to help Tokyo Electron win more equipment orders from the world's largest contract chipmaker. Taiwan has tightened enforcement around the technologies it considers central to national security as the United States and China contest control of advanced semiconductor supply chains.
The sentences
Chen Li-ming, a former employee of both TSMC and Tokyo Electron, received the heaviest penalty at 10 years. Three other former TSMC employees received terms ranging from two to six years. A former Tokyo Electron employee received a 10-month sentence, suspended for three years. The court also imposed the $5 million fine on Tokyo Electron's Taiwanese subsidiary.
Prosecutors had argued that the scheme was designed to give Tokyo Electron, one of the world's largest suppliers of chip-manufacturing equipment, an edge in selling tools to TSMC by exploiting confidential details about the chipmaker's production processes.
A widening crackdown
Reuters reported separately that Tokyo Electron has cut ties with an executive linked to Chinese rivals, citing the Financial Times. The company's local unit had been on notice since prosecutors brought the case last year that a corporate fine was possible alongside individual prison terms.
Tokyo Electron and TSMC did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Al Jazeera reported. The defendants' attorneys were not quoted in the wire accounts of Monday's ruling, leaving open whether any of the five will appeal.
The verdict lands as Taiwan's chip industry remains the focal point of global technology policy, with Washington pressing Taipei to keep the most advanced manufacturing on the island and Beijing pushing to close the gap. Monday's sentences signal that Taiwanese courts are prepared to treat leaks of process technology as a national-security matter, not a commercial dispute.