It seems that with the protection of intellectual property from the company Micron as a withered cask - flows from all the slots. Only a month has passed since the information about the arrest of two former employees of Micron, who allegedly handed over secret information about the technology of memory production to the Taiwanese contractor UMC, is again reported about the thefts and arrests.
According to the publication of United Evening News, which refers to the authoritative resource Tapei Times, the Taiwan prosecutor's office demanded the arrest of five former employees of the company Inotera Memories, which since December last year became the full ownership of Micron. In the period from September to November 2016, these individuals reportedly handed over to their future employer in China secret information about memory manufacturing technologies. The data was transmitted in the form of photocopies (photographic images), paper photocopies, messages by e-mail and using the short message service WeChat.
All suspects left work in the company Inotera Memories for the transition to a profile company in China. According to rumors, this was helped by the largest Chinese investment company of IT orientation - Tsinghua Unigroup. The latter has been repeatedly mentioned in our news since 2015 and was marked by the desire to buy both Micron itself and to acquire a significant stake in Western Digital. Both transactions were blocked by US regulators. It seems that Tsinghua Unigroup found another way to solve the problem of technological hunger.
It is reported that each of the suspects in the theft of technological secrets Micron was credited three times as much salary than they received in the company Inotera Memories. It is about the sum of 200 000 new Taiwan dollars per month to each, which is equivalent to $ 6576. Whatever one may say, this is an extremely weighty argument for changing jobs. How many will refuse?.
The company Tsinghua Unigroup and a number of other large Chinese companies started late last year and this year to build three large megaphones manufacturing 3D NAND and DRAM. After the plants reach full capacity in about five years, China will have access to quite inexpensive national operational and non-volatile memory. It will no longer depend on the whims of the international memory market and from Western producers. Also, this is guaranteed to bring down the international memory market, which Micron's management warns at every opportunity.