[ISN] Tech Execs Charged With Industrial Espionage

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Mon Jul 31 2006 - 00:27:29 PDT


http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200607/200607280015.html

July 28,2006 

Three former executives with a technology firm and a university professor 
have been charged with industrial espionage over their attempt to steal 
their employer's non-memory chip technology and set up on their own in 
China. The four were caught by prosecutors with the help of the National 
Intelligence Service.

Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office indicted the former executives, 
one of them identified as Park (42) and the academic identified as Kwak 
(56), an outside director on the electronic firm's board, with industrial 
espionage. Park is accused of conspiring with his fellow executives to 
pirate three of the company's non-memory chip products in China at far 
lower prices and sell them there, and stealing circuit diagrams and chip 
design files. They then informed the academic, who assisted them in 
stealing the technology and became a co-founder and CEO of the Chinese 
pirate operation.

The four allegedly completed the circuit plans based on their theft last 
September, and the Chinese firm got as far as producing 12 wafers -- from 
which chips are cut - by the time the operation was uncovered.  Estimated 
damage if mass production had gone under way was W235 billion 
(US $1=W954), prosecutors said.


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