The US Justice Department has been granted arrest warrants for three Taiwanese nationals charged with stealing semiconductor secrets from US-based Micron Technologies. The three men – Chen Zhengkun, a. k. a. Stephen Chen; He Jianting, a. J. T. Ho; and Wang Yungming, a. Kenny Wang – were indicted in 2018 for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to steal trade secrets that involved their employers, Taiwan-based chip maker United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), and China-based state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, Co., Ltd. (Jinhua). Chen is a former president of Jinhua who worked previously at UMC; Ho and Wang are former employees of UMC. All three worked previously at Micron Memory Taiwan Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Micron Technologies. The three men were supposed to be arraigned – appear before the court for the formal presentation of charges – on Wednesday. After they failed to show up for their hearing, the government prosecutors asked for and received arrest warrants from the judge.
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Wright seized the moment and told the BBC and Wired magazine that it was he. Others in the cryptocurrency community decided this was bollocks and so was born an ongoing soap opera-style tale of "he said, she said". Once upon a time Wright and Ver were "trusted colleagues" of each other, the court heard. This ceased to be the case in November 2018 when the two came up with different visions for the future of Bitcoin. One was called Bitcoin ABC and the other Bitcoin SV. The difference between these was apparently so vast that Wright told Ver the latter was now his "enemy. " Upset by Ver's April 2019 YouTube video calling him a liar and fraud who posed as Bitcoin's real creator, Wright sued for libel. He hired a process server who caught Ver on a business trip to London and also a top barrister, Adam Wolanski QC. Ver struck back with Hugh Tomlinson QC; neither side was short of cash, it would seem. Nonetheless, after a year of legal wrangling, Lord Justices Dingemans, Flaux and Popplewell threw out Wright's case.
Lead judge Lord Justice Dingemans wrote: Yesterday Ver published a YouTube video celebrating his victory and inviting Wright to pay him off in Bitcoin Cash. Cautiously tiptoeing around the central thrust of the case, Lord Justice Dingemans also wrote in the judgment: "I should make it clear that this judgment does not address whether Dr Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto. This is because it was not an issue on the appeal. " Presumably the learned Court of Appeal beak had taken a quick look at YouTube videos about Bitcoin and realised what a giant morass he would have stepped into. Wright was previously ordered by an American court to hand over $5bn in bits and bytes to the estate of a former business partner and fellow Bitcoin speculator. Some have said he is also the inventor of the inventor of Bitcoin. ® Bootnote The author of this article has absolutely no interest in Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. None whatsoever. There is absolutely no need to email him offering him free "currency", entry to pyramid schemes, or indeed anything else at all related to any cryptocurrency, blockchain or similar.
Assistant US Attorney Laura Vartain Horn didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Both Jinhua and UMC have pleaded not guilty. Two weeks ago, a court in Taiwan found UMC and three former employees – two of whom were Ho and Wang – guilty of stealing Micron's trade secrets, according to Taiwan News. UMC, ordered to pay a fine of TWD$100m ($3. 4m), has said it intends to appeal and the individuals involved may do so as well. Ho received a sentence of five years and six months in jail and was fined TWD$5m ($170K); Wang received a sentence of four years and six months and was fined TWD$4m ($136K); the third, Rong Le-tien got six years and six months, with a fine of TWD$6m ($203K). This may have something to do with Ho and Wang missing their US arraignment. In an event, neither China nor Taiwan have extradition treaties [PDF] with the US, so it's unlikely they'll appear in a US court anytime soon. Between 2016 and 2018, according to the US government's indictment [PDF], the men were involved in stealing trade secrets related to the production of DRAM supposedly worth between $400m and $8.
A self-described "blockchain expert" claiming to be the inventor of Bitcoin has had his attempt to sue a YouTuber, who made a video rubbishing that claim, laughed out of the UK High Court. Craig Wright, an Australian-born computer scientist and citizen of Antigua & Barbuda who lives in Surrey, in southeast England, lost a legal bid to sue one Roger Ver. The UK's Court of Appeal ruled late last week that Wright cannot sue Ver because England & Wales is not "the most appropriate place" for the suit, upholding an earlier High Court finding that audiences on Twitter and YouTube for the vid were mainly in the US. Ver, a Bitcoin speculator and maker of YouTube videos about it, published one on 15 April 2019 which said Wright "had fraudulently claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, that is to say the person, or one of the group of people, who developed Bitcoin, " as the court put it. Back when the wider world cared about such things, the identity of Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, "Satoshi Nakamoto", was a hot topic.
75bn. The secrets were technical data related to the design and manufacturing of Micron's DRAM products and were allegedly stolen via email and Google Cloud uploads. Jinhua, UMC, and Ho, the DoJ claims, filed five patents and a patent application in 2016 and 2017 containing secrets taken from Micron. Coincidentally, UMC in 2018 filed three patent infringement claims in a Chinese court against two Micron subsidiaries based in China and won an injunction. Taiwan's UMC winds down DRAM project after Micron IP tussle READ MORE According to an SEC financial filing in April, UMC said the Chinese court has approved the withdrawal of one of the claims while two continue to be litigated. The filing also notes that the impact of the DoJ lawsuit remains uncertain. That was before the court in Taiwan found the company guilty. Micron meanwhile has civil litigation against the companies that has been put on hold pending the resolution of the US government's criminal case. The DoJ case was filed in 2018 as part of its " Initiative to Combat Chinese Economic Espionage " under then Attorney General Jeff Sessions as the US-China trade war was escalating.
It followed three cases of people charged with spying for China in 2017. Since the launch of that initiative, there have been more than 20 criminal espionage, trade secret, and export control cases brought by the Justice Department. Jinhua in 2018 was placed on the US Commerce Department's Entity List, which forbids US companies from doing business with the designated firms. It's still there. ®