Liberty Times, July 31, 2026, Page A1
[Reporter Chang Wen-Chuan/Taipei] Chen Li-Ming, a former engineer of TSMC, after joining Tokyo Electron in Japan, colluded with current TSMC engineers Wu Bing-Jun, Ge Yi-Ping, and Chen Wei-Jie to steal confidential information, including TSMC’s 2-nanometer and 14-angstrom chip manufacturing processes. In April this year, the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced Chen Li-Ming to 10 years in prison, Chen Wei-Jie to 6 years, Wu Bing-Jun to 3 years, and Ge Yi-Ping to 2 years, on charges including “extraterritorial use of trade secrets involving national core critical technologies” under the National Security Act. Yesterday, the Supreme Court rejected the appeals of Chen Li-Ming and Chen Wei-Jie, both of whom remain in custody, thereby finalizing the judgment. The two will be directly transferred to prison to serve their sentences.
Chen Joined Tokyo Electron as Product Manager,
and Recruited Former Colleagues to Steal 2nm Process Data
The Taiwan High Prosecutors Office determined that the first-instance judgment by the Intellectual Property Court was appropriate in both conviction and sentencing, and decided not to appeal. Wu Bing-Jun, Ge Yi-Ping, and Tokyo Electron also did not appeal, making their first-instance judgments final. Tokyo Electron reached a settlement with TSMC and was fined NT$150 million, with a three-year suspended sentence. A Tokyo Electron supervisor, Lu Yi-Yin, who deleted image files that Chen Li-Ming had photographed, was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for three years, for destruction of evidence. She has filed an appeal, which will be handled separately.
According to the judgment, after Chen Li-Ming joined Tokyo Electron as a marketing product manager, he sought to enter TSMC’s 2nm process market and improve the yield rate of his company’s etching equipment. He enlisted Wu Bing-Jun and Ge Yi-Ping for assistance. The two accessed TSMC’s internal systems using company-issued laptops, allowing Chen to photograph process data and experimental results using his mobile phone. Chen Li-Ming also, through Chen Wei-Jie, used borrowed login credentials from another colleague to access databases and secretly photograph 14-angstrom process data.
TSMC detected suspected internal leaks and reported the case to authorities. Prosecutors and investigators conducted searches and interrogations in July last year, and in August filed charges under the National Security Act, the Trade Secrets Act, and for theft of trade secrets. The court determined that the theft created a risk of leakage of TSMC’s trade secrets, jeopardizing international industrial competitiveness and national economic security, and therefore sentenced Chen Li-Ming to 10 years and Chen Wei-Jie to 6 years in prison.