Taiwan Accuses Chinese Apple Supplier of Stealing Secrets, Charges 14 (reuters.com) 19
Taiwanese prosecutors on Friday accused a Chinese Apple supplier of stealing commercial secrets from a Taiwanese supplier and poaching its workforce to win orders from the U.S. company, saying it had charged 14 people. From a report: Taiwan has been stepping up efforts to stop what it views as underhand and illegal activities by Chinese firms to steal know-how and poach away talent in what Taipei's government views as a threat to the island's tech prowess. Prosecutors in New Taipei said after a year-and-a-half investigation they had found that China's Luxshare Precision had targeted Taiwanese competitor Catcher Technology "in order to quickly enter the Apple production chain to win orders." Luxshare "lured" Catcher's China based research and development team with promises of high salaries and stole business secrets from the Taiwanese firm, causing them big losses, the prosecutors said in a statement. Luxshare was doing this in order to be able to "quickly build factories and mass produce cases for iPhones, iPads and other products", the statement said.
china says that is not an crime and we own taiwan (Score:2)
china says that is not an crime and we own taiwan
Re: (Score:2)
china says that is not an crime and we own taiwan
Which means China has over 13,000 covid deaths if one considers China is claiming they "only" have 5,000 deaths [worldometers.info] while Taiwan has 8,000 [worldometers.info].
Re:Pay them more (Score:4, Interesting)
The employer has nothing to do with this. These 14 people are charged with violation of a Taiwanese *criminal* law which specifically prevents transfer of trade secrets to Chinese companies.
So, yes. Luxshare "lured" those employees, in the sense that they incited them to knowingly break a law they must have known existed.
The notion of "Trade Secret" is absolutely something that is subject to abuse, but the Taiwan law tries to avoid those abuses by excluding things that are general knowledge, or which confer no actual competitive advantage, or which the employer doesn't actually try to keep secret. The law doesn't prevent you from taking a job at a Chinese company, but practically if you know something that your employer *reasonably* treats as a trade secret, getting a job at the Chinese company doing the *exact same thing* is illegal.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope the Taiwanese people doing this are planning on leaving permanently. I've read that when they get lured to China and dump their secrets, they are fairly well compensated, but after 5 years all their useful info is gone, and at that point the Chinese companies fire them because, well, they aren't really
Interesting (Score:1)
Also, I know that these 2 entities do not get along and I wonder if that has a large part to do with this?
Re: (Score:2)
Businesses try to make money. News at 11.
"Business secrets" are what's alleged to have been stolen. The legitimacy of the claim depends on to what degree you consider that a valid form of intellectual property. Governments can try to forbid the transfer of what they consider competitive advantages to companies associated with other governments, and employers may make their departing employees sign confidentiality agreements. Enforcing such things when the employee moves to different government's jurisdictio
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Businesses try to make money. News at 11.
"Business secrets" are what's alleged to have been stolen. The legitimacy of the claim depends on to what degree you consider that a valid form of intellectual property. Governments can try to forbid the transfer of what they consider competitive advantages to companies associated with other governments, and employers may make their departing employees sign confidentiality agreements. Enforcing such things when the employee moves to different government's jurisdiction is rather difficult, but it appears in this case the mainland companies were operating and hiring in Taiwan.
As a relevant note, the US has laws [wikipedia.org] that criminalize trade secret theft and specifically distinguishes between trade secret theft that benefits foreign powers versus competitors.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Possible plausible defense that could be used by the thieves:
Somebody gave this stuff!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
authoritarian Government (Score:1)
And everyone else views as Capitalism. (Score:2)
it views as underhand and illegal activities
And everyone else views as Capitalism.