ex-R&D director played a key role in allowing Samsung to beat TSMC in the 14/16nm race - court ruled in favor of TSMC

[zMeul]

source: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150825PD208.html

 

Taiwan's top court has ruled in favor of TSMC in a trade secret case against Liang Mong-song, a former senior director of R&D at TSMC. Liang has been accused of revealing TSMC's trade secrets and patents related to its advanced process technology to Samsung Electronics.

 

The Supreme Court on August 24 maintained the determination made by the second-instance court, prohibiting Liang from working for Samsung in any form until December 31, 2015.

 

Liang played a key role in allowing Samsung to beat TSMC in the 14/16nm race, according to a report published by Taiwan's CommonWealth magazine.

 

At TSMC's quarterly investors conference in January, TSMC chairman Morris Chang admitted that his company would lose out to Samsung in the FinFET segment in 2015.

 

The ruling of the second-instance court was according to an analysis conducted by third-party experts regarding key manufacturing processes of TSMC and Samsung, according to the CommonWealth report.

 

The characteristics of Samsung's 65nm process are still quite different from TSMC's. However, starting with 45nm to 28nm, the difference between Samsung's and TSMC's technologies narrowed, the report found. "The 16nm and 14nm FinFET products that both companies will mass produce this year were even more alike," the report indicated. "It could be hard to tell (if the product) came from Samsung or TSMC if only structural analysis is used."

 

Liang became a professor at a Samsung-sponsored university in South Korea after resigning from his position as a senior director of R&D at TSMC's advanced modules technology division. The students he taught at the university were "in fact veteran Samsung employees," the report disclosed.

 

Liang became CTO of Samsung's system LSI division in July 2011, the report said. Later in 2011, TSMC began to sue Liang in a case involving trade secrets.

 

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oh Samsung .. if you can't beat them join them; if you can't beat or join them, steal their s**t 

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related reading: The Liang Mong-song Story - Hunting Down a Turncoat

[Sauron]

It's not like samsung cares though... they will make a lot more money from this than they'll pay for the fine.

[Tomsen]

It isn't really something surprising in the semiconductor industry.

 

However, taiwan court ruled in favor of a taiwan semiconductor, very interesting...

[bogus]

This reminds me of John Carmak case... to what extent does the know how someone gathers from working experience, becomes trade secret violation when someone applys that knowlege somewhere else.

[Wombo]

Multi-billion dollar company, couple million dollar fine.... That's like getting fined for 20 bucks for parking outside the store to buy your winning lottery ticket.

 

Large companies don't care about fines at all, they are just not large enough to make a difference.

[tsk]

This reminds me of John Carmak case... to what extent does the know how someone gathers from working experience, becomes trade secret violation when someone applys that knowlege somewhere else.

You sign an agreement of confidentiality and non-disclosure. Most large companies have you sign it with your contract, I have signed one myself in my current job.