Taiwan court hands out jail terms of up to 10 years in TSMC trade secrets case

Visitors gather at the Tokyo Electron Ltd (TEL) booth at SEMICON 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan, September 10, 2025. (REUTERS/Ann Wang)

NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan, April 27 (Reuters) - A Taiwan court fined the local unit of Japan's Tokyo Electron T$150 million ($5 million) in a trade secrets case on Monday, handing jail terms of up to 10 years to five defendants for alleged theft of TSMC's sensitive chip technology.

The ruling follows one of Taiwan's highest profile cases of alleged breaches of national core technologies, involving charges under the National Security Act.

In August 2025, prosecutors indicted Chen Li-ming, a former TSMC and Tokyo Electron employee, of unlawfully obtaining the trade secrets, along with other defendants, in a bid to help Tokyo Electron win more equipment orders from TSMC.

Chen was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with three other former employees of the world's biggest contract manufacturer of advanced AI chips getting terms ranging from two to six years.

The court in Taipei's sister city of New Taipei also gave a former Tokyo Electron employee a 10-month sentence, suspended for three years.

Neither Tokyo Electron nor TSMC immediately responded to requests for comment. 

($1=T$31.4110)

(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Clarence Fernandez)