A Taiwan Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced Chen Li-ming, a former Tokyo Electron engineer, to 10 years in prison for stealing TSMC's chip technology secrets, with four co-defendants receiving sentences of up to six years, Bloomberg reported April 27. Tokyo Electron's Taiwan unit was separately fined T$150 million (~$4.78 million) for failing to prevent the theft. The prosecution was brought under Taiwan's National Security Act as a breach of national core technology—the highest-profile semiconductor IP conviction Taiwan has issued—and signals the island's willingness to use criminal law to protect its chipmaking know-how against industrial espionage.