Former Huawei executive sentenced to six years for stealing chip technology

On August 18, a recent judgment on a trade secret case involving chip core technology caused shock in the industry. On July 28, the Shanghai Third Intermediate People's Court issued a first-instance judgment on the case of infringement of trade secrets by Zunpai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. The case was listed as a case supervised by the Ministry of Public Security because it involved chip core technology, complete criminal chain and significant social impact. The court finally ruled that 14 former Huawei employees constituted the crime of infringing trade secrets. The main offender Zhang was sentenced to six years in prison and fined RMB 3 million yuan; another 4 people were sentenced to actual punishment, and the remaining 9 people were sentenced to probation, and the case was fined 13.50 million yuan. In addition, the court ruled to freeze Zunpai and its affiliates a total of 95 million yuan of property, and ordered it to destroy all infringing chip technology information. It is understood that the stolen chip is a strategic project that Huawei spent more than one billion yuan and took three years to build. It carries the company's competitive advantage in the next generation of wireless communication standards. The core technology was stolen and the loss was huge.