SEOUL, April 22 (Reuters) – A South Korean court said on Wednesday it had sentenced a former researcher at Samsung Electronics to seven years in prison for leaking semiconductor technology to a Chinese company.
The Seoul Central District Court found the defendant, identified only by his surname, guilty of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, ruling that the leaked data constituted a national core technology and that he had conspired in the breach.
The 56-year-old was among 10 people indicted last year on suspicion of leaking memory chip manufacturing technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a case authorities said helped pave the way for China’s development of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component for artificial intelligence computing.
Samsung Electronics declined to comment. CXMT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yonhap News Agency reported that the defendant leaked Samsung’s DRAM process technology to CXMT after moving to the Chinese firm with a former Samsung Electronics official. Citing the prosecution’s office, Yonhap also said he received about 2.9 billion won ($1.96 million) over six years from CXMT in return.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.
Last year, CXMT said it planned to raise 29.5 billion yuan ($4.33 billion) through an initial public offering of 10.6 billion shares in Shanghai. The leading Chinese chipmaker said it would use the listing proceeds to upgrade production lines and technologies.
($1 = 6.8204 Chinese yuan renminbi)
($1 = 1,477.4500 won)
(Reporting by Heekyong YangEditing by Ed Davies)
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