Another reason to meddle:
We are at war
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-charges-six-chinese-citizens-with-economic-espionage-1432046527Six Chinese citizens, including three professors who trained together at the University of Southern California, stole sensitive wireless technology from U.S. companies and spirited it back to China, the Justice Department charged.
The six individuals allegedly swiped trade secrets from U.S. companies Avago Technologies and Skyworks Solutions Inc. relating to how to filter out unwanted signals in wireless devices, according to an indictment unsealed late Monday.
They then set up a joint venture with China’s state-controlled Tianjin University to produce and sell equipment using the technology, according to the indictment, and won contracts from both businesses and “military entities.”
The U.S. companies supply components for Apple’s iPhone, among other devices. Authorities said the case demonstrates persistent efforts to steal American technology developed in places like Silicon Valley, where Avago’s U.S. operations are based.
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The charges come amid a heightened Justice Department focus on suspected economic espionage, especially by the Chinese. In May of last year, the department brought charges against five Chinese military employees who allegedly hacked into U.S. companies to steal trade secrets. In March of last year, the U.S. won convictions of two engineers who allegedly stole secrets to manufacturing a white pigment from DuPont Co. and sold them to a Chinese firm.
Last week, network security firm FireEye Inc. said it determined through forensic analysis that Chinese hackers broke into systems at Pennsylvania State University’s engineering college and could have accessed research on U.S. military technology.
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All three of the professors charged in the case received electrical-engineering degrees from the University of Southern California in 2006. After graduation, they split up, with Pang Wei going to work for Avago in Fort Collins, Colo.; Zhang Hao to Skyworks in Woburn, Mass.; and Zhang Huisui to Micrel Semiconductor in San Jose, Calif.
Soon they began emailing about plans to create a business that would sell thin-film bulk acoustic resonator technology in China, but ran into a glitch, according to the indictment.
Intellectual property “is our biggest problem,” Zhang Huisui wrote in an email to the other two, the indictment alleges.
“My work is to make every possible effort to find out about the process’s every possible detail and copy directly to China,” Mr. Pang, the Avago employee, wrote the group a month later, the indictment says.
In another email, Mr. Pang mentioned that their company would have an advantage over rivals because it wouldn’t need to pay for research and development, according to the indictment. Mr. Pang is said to have joked that the company should be called Clifbaw—short for China lift bulk acoustic wave, referring to the technology they are accused of stealing. According to the indictment, Avago had spent 20 years and $50 million to develop its technology.
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In the ensuing months, the professors and their alleged co-conspirators worked to set up companies and file patents in the U.S. and China that the Justice Department says were based on stolen technology. To hide their tracks and avoid tipping off their former employers, the scientists responsible for the theft didn’t file the patents in their own names, according to the indictment.
Avago learned about the thefts from the patent applications in the fall of 2011, according to the indictment, which states that on a trip to China later that year, Mr. Pang’s old boss, Rich Ruby, dropped by his former colleague’s new lab, where he recognized technology stolen from Avago and confronted Mr. Pang about “stealing and using Avago trade secrets.”
Intellectual property rights sure are a killer.
