TAIPEI (TVBS News) — Taiwan's 2022 law protecting "national core critical technologies" was designed to shield the island's semiconductor crown jewels. On Monday (April 27), it claimed its first convictions — four engineers sentenced to prison for leaking Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) trade secrets, marking the moment Taiwan's tech-protection framework moved from statute to enforcement.
The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court (智慧財產及商業法院) sentenced Chen Li-ming (陳力銘), who left TSMC to join Tokyo Electron Taiwan's marketing department, to 10 years in prison. Three engineers at TSMC during the offense period also received sentences: Wu Ping-chun (吳秉駿) was sentenced to three years, Ko Yi-ping (戈一平) to two years, and Chen Wei-chieh (陳韋傑) to six years.
The court also fined Tokyo Electron Taiwan NT$150 million (US$4.77 million) with a three-year suspended sentence, conditional on paying NT$100 million (US$3.18 million) to TSMC and NT$50 million (US$1.59 million) to the national treasury within one year. The ruling also marks the first time a corporation has been convicted under the amended National Security Act (國家安全法).
Chen, who had worked as a yield engineer at TSMC's Fab 12, sought to help his new employer win contracts after joining Tokyo Electron Taiwan. He aimed to position the company as an equipment supplier for TSMC's advanced process nodes. Between the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2025, Chen repeatedly asked his former TSMC colleagues to provide proprietary information about etching machine performance, according to the indictment.
TSMC detected "abnormal access" to confidential files by the implicated engineers during internal monitoring and filed a criminal complaint on July 8, 2025, prosecutors said. Investigators from the Investigation Bureau conducted searches and interviews from July 25 to 28. Chen Li-ming, Wu Ping-chun, and Ko Yi-ping were detained and held incommunicado.
The court said Chen Li-ming's actions "endangered the international competitiveness of the industry and national economic security" by creating the risk that TSMC's trade secrets could leak externally. Chen received the heaviest sentence because he committed five separate offenses — orchestrating four instances of photographing confidential files and one instance of receiving files from Chen Wei-chieh, according to the ruling.
The sentences varied significantly based on cooperation, confession timing, and whether defendants obtained TSMC's forgiveness. Wu and Ko received reduced sentences after confessing during the investigation and trial and obtaining written forgiveness from TSMC. Chen Wei-chieh received a heavier six-year term because he only acknowledged "objective facts" and has not obtained TSMC's forgiveness.
The court noted that Chen Wei-chieh accessed particularly sensitive information involving TSMC's 14-angstrom process technology. This represents TSMC's transition from the "nanometer" to "angstrom" era, according to the ruling. The court described this as a critical advancement for maintaining TSMC's global leadership in semiconductor manufacturing.
TSMC stated in court filings that Tokyo Electron Taiwan is an equipment supplier, not a competitor. The company also stated that the collected trade secrets were not leaked to any third party beyond Tokyo Electron Taiwan and its Japanese parent company, Tokyo Electron Ltd. Chen Li-ming received a partial sentence reduction after prosecutors credited him with identifying Chen Wei-chieh as a co-conspirator.
Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) echoed that assessment Monday, adding that neither the parent company nor its Taiwan subsidiary was organizationally involved in the theft. TEL stated it views the court's finding of inadequate supervision "with the utmost seriousness." The company said it will strengthen information management across the group.
Lu Yi-yin (盧怡尹), a Tokyo Electron Taiwan executive, was separately convicted of destroying evidence after deleting image files that Chen Li-ming had photographed from TSMC materials. She received a 10-month sentence suspended for three years, conditional on paying NT$1 million (US$31,800) to the national treasury and attending six legal education sessions.
The court noted that Lu voluntarily reported to Tokyo Electron Taiwan after discovering the deleted files had been recovered through unknown means — a technical anomaly that prompted her to come forward. The company then reported the incident to investigators. Lu's pretrial confession and cooperation contributed to her suspended sentence.
Tokyo Electron Taiwan's suspended fine reflected the court's recognition of its post-discovery cooperation. The company reached a settlement with TSMC alongside its Japanese parent company. The court said Tokyo Electron Taiwan had taken concrete steps to establish preventive measures.
The ruling tests whether Taiwan's 2022 legal framework can protect the semiconductor industry that produces over 90% of the world's most advanced chips. All convictions may be appealed, and details on defendants' intentions were not immediately available. But for the engineers who once worked in TSMC's cleanrooms — and for the companies that employ former chip workers across Taiwan's science parks — Monday's sentences signal that the era of informal information-sharing between industry insiders has ended. ◼ (At time of reporting, US$1 equals approximately NT$31.44)