Former TSMC engineer indicted for trade secrets theft
A former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) engineer has been charged with stealing secrets from the pure-play foundry.
Former TSMC engineer, Hsu is accused of stealing proprietary information and other materials related to the foundry's 28nm process technology and passing them to China-based Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC), according to the Hsinchu District Prosecutors Office reports digitimes:
Hsu had accepted a job offer at Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC), but was arrested before starting the new job in Shanghai. A report earlier in 2017 cited industry sources saying HLMC had headhunted a team of nearly 50 United Microelectronics (UMC) R&D engineers to help the China-based foundry move its 28nm process technology to mass production as early as possible. Various reports also cited unspecified sources indicating China-based memory chipmakers have been aggressively headhunting talent from Taiwan-based DRAM and fabless companies.
US-based Micron Technology has reportedly taken legal actions against former employees at its Taiwan-based subsidiaries Inotera Memories and Rexchip Electronics, who allegedly stole the company's trade secrets and technologies to help China-based firms develop key DRAM technologies.
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The highest thefts are patents, copyrights and licenses, they rob the entire society from technology development, competition and cheaper products. We could have flying cars for free energy long time ago...
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Pure-play foundry turned into foul-play foundry.
Nobody's going to spend millions developing new technology if they can't get the money back. Where would the development money come from in the first place if the developers never had a chance to make any profit? From a communist government? Sure, some of it, but if you look at the current world, most of the things we enjoy every day or dream of every day come from private enterprises. In Soviet Union a plastic bag was luxury.
On the other hands patents expire in time, allowing everybody to copy the innovations after a while. The expiration time is calculated so that the inventor should have had time to get back their money and them so more to make it worth it.
The only problem in this system are the flaws in the American patent and justice system, which make patent trolls possible. I doubt Trump is going to fix that. We are lucky if he doesn't make it worse.
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Nobody's going to spend millions developing new technology if they can't get the money back. Where would the development money come from in the first place if the developers never had a chance to make any profit? From a communist government? Sure, some of it, but if you look at the current world, most of the things we enjoy every day or dream of every day come from private enterprises. In Soviet Union a plastic bag was luxury.
That shot at communism dismisses realities of pre-soviet, tsarists Russia.
100 years ago Russia was poverty stricken, feudal society based on agrarian economy.
And serfdom was abolished only 150 years ago.
Keep that in mind when comparing it to the West, which beside industrialized economy had nearly endless supply of free resources from their colonies.
And similarly with China. These 2 countries have achieved in 100 years what normally takes 500 years.
I bet that your capitalist masters don't tell you that

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That is why large corporations, through their politicians, create the law to protect their interests. And they can charge as they want. The biggest discoveries have been made without spending millions on developing, but was sold to big companies and lock up. Like how drug companies were exploiting the market by acquiring decades-old crucial medicines and suddenly raising their prices astronomically. Like ordinary people are building car engines working on water but you not see any company produce car on water (hydrogen has introduced by corporations to maintain the fuel sales model. It is dangerous and difficult to store, better just create hydrogen from the water in engine, but who would buy water?) There are many patents, all bought by corporations and locked in a drawer... Just to maintain their business... Or copyrights what cease 70 years after death of author if he not sold his rights to any company, because if he sold it can last forever... So they created one song and live whole life from it, noone want hear them or noone would come if they do concert, but thats business, big corpotrations tell to use and sell their songs and threaten that will stop cooperate if not, so they play their music and normal (better) artists can not break through...
Best was when Apple gets patent on a rectangle shape with rounded corners.. They had to spend millions to develop that...
And second thing why they would spend milions on developing new things when there is no competition on old things, imagine if patents could last only half year ... they would have to spend more on developing new things to stay on top...
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This just made me think of Adam Jensen for some reason..