Prosecutors in South Korea have indicted 10 people, including former Samsung Electronics executives, for allegedly leaking the company’s technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT).
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday said five people had been arrested, including a former Samsung executive who allegedly recruited key personnel and leaked the company’s proprietary technology to CXMT, according to a report by Yonhap News Agency.
They face charges for violating the country’s Unfair Competition Prevention Act and the Industrial Technology Protection Act, according to the prosecutor’s Information Technology Crime Investigation Department.
Advertisement
Another five individuals, including CXMT employees, were indicted without detention on the same charges, the Yonhap report said.
South Korean prosecutors alleged that CXMT recruited a former Samsung vice-president as a research department head soon after the Chinese chipmaker was established in 2016. CXMT made the executive responsible for poaching key Samsung engineers to bolster development of its 10-nanometre dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology.
Advertisement
The legal fallout has cast a shadow over CXMT, which had made strides to catch up with global makers of advanced memory chips and pushed forward Beijing’s drive for semiconductor self-reliance.
Samsung and CXMT did not immediately respond to requests for comments on Friday.