Ex-worker of Tokyo Electron gets 10-year jail term in TSMC trade secrets case

NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan – A Taiwan court fined the local unit of Japan’s Tokyo Electron T$150 million ($5 million) on Monday, April 27, and handed jail terms of up to 10 years to five convicted in a case relating to TSMC’s sensitive chip technology.

The ruling follows one of Taiwan’s highest profile cases of alleged breaches of national core technologies, involving charges under the National Security Act.

In August 2025, prosecutors indicted Chen Li-ming, a former TSMC and Tokyo Electron employee, of unlawfully obtaining the trade secrets, along with other defendants, in a bid to help Tokyo Electron win more equipment orders from TSMC.

Chen was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with terms ranging from two to six years handed to three other former employees of TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced AI chips.

The court in Taipei’s sister city of New Taipei also gave a former Tokyo Electron employee a 10-month sentence, suspended for three years.

Chen was among four of the five individual defendants to plead guilty, as did the Taiwan unit of Tokyo Electron. The court said the defendants could appeal against the decision.

Neither Tokyo Electron nor TSMC, the global giant that makes chips for Nvidia, Apple, and Google, among many others, immediately responded to requests for comment.

In December, Taiwan prosecutors said they had charged the Tokyo Electron unit with violating the National Security Act and the Trade Secrets Act after Chen was indicted in August for alleged theft of trade secrets from TSMC.

Tokyo Electron has said previously that the matter had no impact on its financial results.

It also said it would further reinforce compliance and audit systems across the group, including its Taiwan unit, to “ensure that such incidents never occur again.” – Rappler.com