TAIPEI, Taiwan—A former top designer at Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC was recently convicted for executing a scheme to steal trade secrets from his employer and team up with Chinese state-owned firms to start a new company based on the stolen information.
IP Theft
Taipei’s prosecutor’s office began an investigation against Chien and other HTC executives in 2013, after the Taiwanese smartphone maker filed charges against them that same year.According to Taiwanese media, the prosecutors found that Chien stole HTC’s smartphone icon interface design and other proprietary technologies and passed these company secrets to his mainland Chinese partners, with the goal of eventually forming their own mobile phone design company in China. Ultimately, they didn’t succeed in carrying out those plans.
Multiple Taiwanese media reported that Chien’s Chinese partners were unidentified state-owned companies with connections to the Chengdu municipal government in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province.
Chien recruited five fellow HTC employees—all Taiwanese nationals—for his efforts, including Wu Chien-hung, a product design section leader; Justin Huang, and Huang Hung-yi, both senior managers of design and innovation; and Hung Chung-yi, manager at the manufacturing design department.
Money Scheme
Prosecutors also found that Chien and Wu concocted a scheme to raise money for the future Chinese company: they had HTC suppliers provide them with forged receipts for fake transactions. After HTC paid the bills to the suppliers based on the faked receipts, suppliers allegedly would provide kickbacks to Chien, Wu, and others.Chien’s illicit earnings of about 6.82 million New Taiwan Dollars (about $221,100) were confiscated by Taiwan authorities. In the 2013 investigation, authorities found 3 million New Taiwan Dollars (about $97,260) in cash at Chien’s home, and another 7.8 million New Taiwan Dollars (about $252,870) in cash in his Audi vehicle.
Wu’s 7.7 million New Taiwan Dollars (about $249,600) in illicit earnings were confiscated.
In total, prosecutors found that Chien and others received a total of 33.56 million New Taiwan Dollars in kickbacks from the suppliers.
Taiwan as Target
As China seeks to turn itself into a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse, it’s sought to poach tech engineers and other talents from Taiwan, home to many top tech manufacturers. In recent years, Taiwanese authorities have prosecuted several incidences of intellectual property theft involving Taiwanese nationals and Chinese companies.China’s domestic industry still lags on the latest technology for manufacturing the most advanced semiconductors—hence its focus on recruiting from Taiwan.
According to a July 2018 article by Taiwan’s leading financial publication Business Weekly, which cited data from unidentified headhunting companies and estimates by semiconductor experts, there are about 2,000 Taiwanese staffers at Chinese semiconductor companies in mainland China. Additionally, there are about another 1,000 Taiwanese working at Taiwan branch offices of Chinese companies.Most of these 3,000 Taiwanese talents either hold senior positions or are research and development staff, according to Business Weekly.