A Taiwanese criminal prosecution over the alleged theft of TSMC 2-nanometer process trade secrets, described in coverage as the first prosecution under Taiwan's reinforced 2022 National Security Act. On April 24, 2026, a Taiwan court sentenced five people, including former TSMC engineer Chen Li-ming, to up to ten years in prison, and fined Tokyo Electron's Taiwan domestic arm $5 million (Source: click.mail.fortune.com).
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Parties (prosecution) | Taiwan (prosecuting authority) |
| Defendants | Chen Li-ming (former TSMC engineer); 4 unnamed co-defendants; Tokyo Electron Taiwan |
| Court | Taiwan court (jurisdiction not specified in coverage) |
| Filed | 2025 |
| Status | Judgment for the prosecution |
| Last status check | 2026-04-28 |
Background
The defendants are alleged to have stolen TSMC 2-nanometer process trade secrets and conveyed them to Tokyo Electron's Taiwan operations. The prosecution rested on the 2022 National Security Act's "core key technologies" provision, which broadened criminal liability for trade-secret theft to cover semiconductors and other designated core technologies and raised the maximum penalty for such theft, with leading-edge semiconductors as the canonical example (Source: click.mail.fortune.com).
TSMC's 2nm process (N2) is the projected node for next-generation AI accelerators, including Nvidia's post-Blackwell roadmap and Apple's M-series. The alleged transfer of process know-how to a Japanese tool vendor, Tokyo Electron, occurs in a market where the United States, Korea, and Japan are all pursuing leading-edge logic. Tokyo Electron is one of three dominant suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing tools, alongside Applied Materials and ASML (Source: click.mail.fortune.com).
Claims
The charge is theft of TSMC's 2-nanometer process trade secrets, prosecuted under the 2022 National Security Act amendment's "core key technologies" provision. The amendment was passed in part to deter cross-border transfer of designated semiconductor and other core technologies (Source: click.mail.fortune.com).
Current status
The April 24, 2026 decision was a judgment for the prosecution. Coverage described it as the first prosecution under Taiwan's reinforced 2022 National Security Act. Five people, including Chen Li-ming, were sentenced to up to ten years in prison, and Tokyo Electron's Taiwan domestic arm was fined $5 million. The case bears on whether judicial liability extends to affiliated foreign-parent entities, and on the broader question of cross-supply-chain knowledge transfer among leading-edge logic producers (Source: click.mail.fortune.com).
Adjacent litigation and policy
The case sits alongside other criminal and export-control actions over semiconductor and AI-relevant know-how:
- US Department of Justice Ding case (2024–2025) — the prosecution of Linwei Ding for semiconductor and AI trade-secret theft from Google.
- US export-control regime — see BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — Interim Final Rule (Jan 13, 2025) and Executive Order 14320 — Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack for the chip side.
- China's Manus/Meta acquisition block (April 27, 2026) — a different mechanism (foreign-investment review) addressing a related concern, the cross-border movement of AI-relevant assets.
These actions reflect a split between export-control and criminal-statute approaches to AI-relevant know-how (Source: click.mail.fortune.com).
Relationships
- regulated-by: Taiwan judicial system; National Security Act (2022 reinforcement).
- related: Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure (TSMC), Semiconductor Supply Chain, BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — Interim Final Rule (Jan 13, 2025), Export Controls (AI), Anthropic v. United States (Pentagon ban challenge) (different jurisdiction; same theme of national-security applied to AI infrastructure).
- instance-of: AI and National Security
- contradicts: open-knowledge-flow framing of frontier-tech competition; supports the tightening-IP-flow framing.
Confidence note
Medium. Single Fortune Tech newsletter source. Primary court documents in Mandarin not retrieved. Verify before citing precise sentences, defendant names beyond Chen Li-ming, and the $5M fine figure.