Micron’s Taiwan Dispute: Trade Secrets, Employees and Proof

A hiring contract that prohibits bringing a former employer’s confidential information does not, by itself, establish a company’s defense to a Taiwan trade-secret fine. In its official account of the January 27, 2022 corporate ruling in the Micron dispute, Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court required active, concrete and effective prevention measures.

For a U.S. technology company, the operational question is what happens when an engineer arrives with files, when IT detects another company’s material, or when a manager approves an exception to access controls. A policy becomes useful evidence when the company can show how it handled those events. These are practical implications of the court’s reasoning, not findings about any other employer.

Micron’s own Taiwan presence spans multiple entities and locations: its company directory, checked October 3, 2026, lists Micron Memory Taiwan in Taichung and Micron Technology Taiwan in Taoyuan, among other Taiwan sites. For businesses with their own U.S.–Taiwan development arrangements, the dispute raises questions about which entity owns the information, who may use it and how those permissions survive a job change.

The U.S. plea and acquittal concern different defendants

The U.S. Department of Justice’s November 1, 2018 announcement concerned an indictment filed on September 27, 2018 and unsealed that November. It charged UMC, Fujian Jinhua and three individuals in an alleged scheme involving Micron’s DRAM trade secrets. These were allegations, not findings of guilt against everyone named.

On October 28, 2020, DOJ announced UMC’s guilty plea to one count under 18 U.S.C. § 1832(a)(3). The court imposed a US$60 million fine and three years’ probation; UMC agreed to cooperate. The release described admitted facts involving confidential material brought from Micron’s Taiwan subsidiary and off-network laptops used to access it. This is the prosecutor’s published account of UMC’s plea, not a judgment against Fujian Jinhua.

Fujian Jinhua subsequently went to trial. The Northern District of California’s February 27, 2024 criminal minutes, in case 3:18-cr-00465-MMC, document 648, record Judge Maxine M. Chesney’s finding of not guilty on Counts One, Two and Seven after a bench trial. The linked document is a public copy of the court record hosted by The Register. It records the result but does not reproduce the judge’s oral reasons.

UMC’s plea and Fujian Jinhua’s acquittal must both remain visible in any account of the dispute. A company evaluating a business partner should identify the defendant, charge and disposition before relying on an old indictment or headline. The U.S. record here supplies procedural history; it does not establish a general rule about U.S. jurisdiction over every incident in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s corporate sentence and individual appeals took separate paths

The Taiwan decisions below concern UMC and individuals Ho (何建廷), Wang (王永銘) and Rong (戎樂天). The relevant milestones, verified for this column on October 3, 2026, are:

The February 2026 ruling is the latest merits disposition verified here for the individual defendants. A later appellate disposition or confirmation of finality has not been established for this column as of October 3, 2026. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe that ruling as final, or to present the superseded 2020 sentences as today’s outcome.

That history matters when using the case for compliance training. UMC’s corporate prevention analysis can be discussed with its final status identified. The individuals’ changing outcomes require their own procedural qualifications.

The protected information has to be identifiable

Taiwan’s Trade Secrets Act, Article 2, requires three characteristics together: information not generally known among people dealing with that kind of information, actual or potential economic value because it is secret, and reasonable measures by its owner to preserve secrecy. Technical value alone does not satisfy all three.

For an engineering team, a useful internal record connects a defined item to those requirements. A hypothetical process-development file might contain a particular version of a parameter window and the experiments supporting it. Its custodian could explain what remains unpublished, why a competitor would save time by obtaining it, which team members had access and which controls operated at the relevant date. “Our process technology” is too broad to perform that evidentiary work by itself.

The practical recommendation is to preserve the relationship between the technical information and its access history. A confidentiality label can contribute to that record, but so can permissions, training records, recipient restrictions and documented responses to access exceptions. None is a statutory guarantee. The question is whether the measures were reasonable for the information and actually existed when protection was needed.

Ownership needs a separate answer. Under Article 3, trade secrets developed by an employee in performing employment duties generally belong to the employer unless the contract provides otherwise. Under Article 4, commissioned R&D follows the contract; without an ownership agreement, the contractor owns the secret, while the commissioning party may use it in its business. Paying for development therefore does not automatically give the customer ownership under that rule.

For a U.S. parent and Taiwan subsidiary, or a U.S. customer and Taiwan development supplier, the evidence package should distinguish employment, assignment and permission to use. Article 7 leaves the territory, duration, content and method of licensed use to the parties’ agreement and prohibits sublicensing without the owner’s consent. A shared project name does not explain those permissions. An agreement and its amendments can.

Criminal liability depends on conduct and intent

As checked on October 3, 2026, the MOJ’s legislative history lists January 15, 2020 as the Act’s latest amendment. Articles 13-1 through 13-4 were added on January 30, 2013. The 2020 amendment added, among other provisions, the investigation-confidentiality regime discussed below.

Article 13-1 requires intent to obtain an unlawful benefit for oneself or another, or to harm the trade-secret owner’s interests. It covers specified conduct including wrongful acquisition, unauthorized or beyond-authority copying, use or disclosure, and failure to delete or destroy information after the owner directs it, or concealment of that information. Knowing downstream acquisition, use or disclosure can also qualify under its fourth subparagraph. An accidental policy breach is not automatically this criminal offense.

The ordinary penalty is imprisonment up to five years or short-term detention, with a possible additional fine of NT$1 million to NT$10 million. Attempts are punishable. If the offender’s gain exceeds the maximum fine, the statute permits a higher fine within three times that gain. These are statutory ranges and conditions, not predictions of a sentence.

Article 13-2 adds intent to use the secret in a foreign country, mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau to an Article 13-1 offense. It provides imprisonment of one to ten years and a possible additional fine of NT$3 million to NT$50 million; attempts are punishable. Where the offender’s gain exceeds the maximum fine, the fine may be increased within two to ten times that gain.

The foreign-use element can arise in a U.S.-bound project too, provided the underlying offense and intent exist. Authorized collaboration or a lawful transfer to a U.S. parent is not criminal merely because the destination is overseas.

In the August 17, 2022 Supreme Court judgment, the court explained that Article 13-2 does not require completed overseas use. Its remand required a fuller assessment of the evidence bearing on intent, rather than treating individual pieces in isolation. That legal explanation did not itself finally convict the individuals of the aggravated offense.

For counsel investigating an incident, the practical implication is to retain project instructions and authorization records alongside the files themselves. Where information was meant to go, what each participant knew and what permission existed may be separate questions. The location of a laptop alone cannot answer all of them.

The receiving employer needs evidence of prevention

Article 13-4 exposes a company to the statutory fine when its representative, agent, employee or other personnel commit an Article 13-1 or 13-2 offense in the course of business. It contains an exception where the company’s representative has done their utmost to prevent the offense. That exception is fact-dependent.

The January 2022 court release describes why UMC did not satisfy it: the court considered exceptions allowing personal USB access and the lack of corrective action after IT detected Micron-related material. The lesson for another employer is to examine its own response to exceptions and alerts, not to assume a contractual ban resolves the issue.

Consider a hypothetical U.S. equipment supplier hiring a Taiwan engineer. The engineer offers a troubleshooting folder from a previous job. A defensible response would separate that material from the working project, stop its circulation and have authorized legal and technical personnel determine its provenance and permitted use. It would also preserve a record of the response. Asking colleagues to inspect the folder for useful ideas while promising not to copy it would undermine the stated purpose of keeping outside information out of the project.

This recommendation does not require treating a new employee’s general skills as someone else’s property. The review should identify particular information and restrictions. Development records showing the team’s own experiments, public references and authorized inputs can explain how a result was reached without relying on an unsupported assurance that everything was independently developed.

Civil relief has its own purpose and timetable

Taiwan’s criminal penalties are not the owner’s compensation. Article 11 allows an injured party to seek removal of an infringement or prevention of a threatened infringement, together with destruction or another necessary disposition of qualifying items. Obtaining urgent interim relief requires separate procedural analysis; a criminal complaint does not itself deliver an injunction.

Article 12 provides damages liability for intentional or negligent unlawful infringement and joint and several liability for joint infringers. Its damages claim expires if not exercised within two years after knowledge of both the conduct and the liable party, or after ten years from the conduct. A company should have those dates assessed while investigating, rather than assume it can wait for the criminal case to finish.

Article 13 offers alternative approaches to measuring damages, including the infringer’s gains. For intentional infringement, the court may, on request and considering the circumstances, increase the award to no more than three times proven damages. The increase is discretionary. A large criminal fine in a reported case is not a proxy for recoverable civil damages.

The complaint rules also need attention. Article 13-3 makes Article 13-1 prosecution complaint-dependent and states that a complaint or withdrawal concerning one co-offender does not extend to the others. That provision does not impose the same complaint requirement on Article 13-2. A commercial settlement and the procedural position of each defendant therefore require separate review.

Presenting evidence without exposing it again

In the same Taiwan litigation, the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court issued a confidentiality-preservation order, 113年度刑秘聲字第18號, on November 6, 2024. It prohibited the specified recipients from using the identified evidence outside that criminal proceeding or disclosing it to people outside the order. This was an order about evidence handling, not an additional finding of criminal guilt.

For current planning, Trade Secrets Act Article 14 permits a court, on a party’s application and where appropriate, to close proceedings or restrict access to litigation material involving secrets. At the investigative stage, Article 14-1 permits prosecutors to issue confidentiality orders when needed for the investigation. These protections have conditions and defined recipients; secrecy should not be assumed simply because a dispute concerns confidential technology.

A practical initial briefing can identify the suspected information, its owner, relevant custodians and key dates without attaching the process files. Counsel can then arrange lawful preservation and an appropriate submission route. Preservation should retain originals and relevant access records while controlling further circulation. Sending the entire technical archive to a large internal email group can create another disclosure problem before the first one has been assessed.

For an initial Taiwan-law inquiry, contact partner and attorney Wei Tseng (曾雋崴) at Hovering International Law Firm: wei@hoveringlaw.com.tw. Send only a non-confidential outline first and ask how sensitive material should be provided. Taipei office: 7F-2, No. 35, Sec. 1, Chengde Rd., Datong Dist., Taipei City 103, Taiwan.

More columns for semiconductor companies

Sources

All sources below were opened and checked on October 3, 2026 (KST). Taiwan court releases are official summaries, not representations that unpublished evidence or the complete underlying trial record was reviewed.

• Micron Technology, Locations, undated company directory; locations checked October 3, 2026.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Northern District of California, PRC State-Owned Company, Taiwan Company, and Three Individuals Charged With Economic Espionage, November 1, 2018; indictment announcement.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Taiwan Company Pleads Guilty to Trade Secret Theft in Criminal Case Involving PRC State-Owned Company, October 28, 2020; plea and sentencing announcement.
• U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, United States v. Fujian Jinhua, criminal minutes, 3:18-cr-00465-MMC, document 648, February 27, 2024; court document reproduced by The Register.
• Taichung District Court, official release on 106年度智訴字第11號, June 12, 2020.
• Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, official release on 109年度刑智上重訴字第4號, January 27, 2022.
• Supreme Court, 111年度台上字第3655號, criminal judgment, August 17, 2022; Judicial Yuan judgment database.
• Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, official release on 111年度刑智上重更一字第1號, February 13, 2026.
• Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, 113年度刑秘聲字第18號, confidentiality-preservation order, November 6, 2024; Judicial Yuan judgment database.
• Ministry of Justice, Laws & Regulations Database, Trade Secrets Act: Article 2, Article 3, Article 4 and Article 7: definition, ownership and licensing.
• Ministry of Justice, Trade Secrets Act: Article 11, Article 12 and Article 13: civil relief, limitation periods and damages.
• Ministry of Justice, Trade Secrets Act: Article 13-1, Article 13-2, Article 13-3 and Article 13-4: criminal offenses, complaints and employer fines.
• Ministry of Justice, Trade Secrets Act: Article 14, Article 14-1 and legislative history: confidentiality protections and amendment dates; latest amendment listed January 15, 2020.

General information, not individualized legal advice. Sources checked October 3, 2026 (KST).