According to Taiwan media reports, last Friday, the Taichung Prefecture Court of Taiwan, Taiwan made a judgment on the case that UMC was accused of assisting Fujian Jinhua for stealing the production technology of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) of American technology manufacturer Micron. Rong, He and Wang were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 4 and a half years to 6 and a half years respectively. UMC was fined NT$2.1 billion (equivalent to RMB 23.9 million). The "fuse" of this case was that UMC cooperated with Fujian Jinhua to develop 32nm DRAM technology. Three Taiwanese Micron executives randomly transferred to UMC to UMC to cause suspicion of commercial espionage. This eventually led to judicial litigation between Micron, UMC and Fujian Jinhua in the United States, mainland China and Taiwan.
For this judgment, UMC issued a clear statement that its technology is based on its own technology, and a complete R&D record can be issued to prove that:
The research and development of this DRAM process technology is a special project approved by the Taiwan Investment Review Committee. It is a research and development team composed of more than 300 engineers based on its own technology as the starting point (most of which are UMC experienced R&D personnel) worked together, and took more than two years to independently develop DRAM processes, and retained relevant R&D records. We hope that DRAM R&D talents and R&D results trained by this process can be retained in Taiwan. In addition to the efforts of engineers, UMC's years of accumulated R&D experience and inheritance are also the mainstay of driving development.
, and Micron's statement is vague, just claiming that technology is the result of Micron's long-term cultivation in Taiwan over the past 40 years:
Micron has invested billions of dollars in the past 40 years to continue to develop industry-leading advanced technologies, and has been engaged in process development and technological innovation in Taiwan, China for a long time. In this process, thousands of colleagues from Taiwan, jointly participated in the development of the company's smart property. Micron's business secrets were stolen in Taiwan, China and even illegally exported.
In fact, we can see from their respective statements that whether UMC's technical details steal the secrets need detailed analysis and judgment to make a ruling. After all, Micron's technology also originated from Taiwan, and whether UMC's technology directly comes from Micron's technology cannot be concluded just because UMC's three former Taiwanese officials have poached three former Micron's Taiwanese officials. Micron's real purpose is to crack down on cooperation between Taiwan's industry and mainland manufacturers through patent litigation, and to achieve the effect of killing the chicken and intimidating the monkey.
The judgment of the Taiwan court is likely to succumb to the pressure of the United States and put a harsh move on Taiwan's local industry, which is also a helpless move. In its statement, UMC emphasized that it is expected to keep the roots of Taiwan's technology in Taiwan and hope to play the local industrial card against the court's judgment, but the court is obviously unmoved. UMC also stated in its statement that UMC is determined to continue appealing.
