Billions Worth of Samsung Chip Technology Stolen

From: The Chosun Ilbo | Feb. 05, 2010

Prosecutors have arrested the vice president of a U.S. firm and an employee of its Korean arm on suspicion of leaking 95 chip-making technologies from Samsung Electronics and selling 13 of them to Hynix.

The Seoul Dongbu Prosecutor's Office said Wednesday it arrested the vice president of AMAT and a staffer of Korean arm AMK and booked eight others without detention. The world's largest semiconductor equipment maker, AMAT supplies parts to both Samsung Electronics and Hynix.

The theft includes 40 core technologies, including for the world's first 30-nano DRAM chips developed by Samsung, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said it was a new type of industrial espionage where a partner company is coaxed into stealing technologies from the rival in return for equipment sales. Direct loss to Samsung Electronics is hundreds of billions of won, they said and including indirect losses from narrowing the technology gap with its rivals the losses mount into the trillions.

But prosecutors said that they have not yet confirmed whether the stolen Samsung technologies were leaked to other local or foreign firms as well. Hynix denied using Samsung technologies but claimed some staff collected the information for "study purposes."