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Seoul court cuts Samsung leak sentence as China chip talent race grows
Seoul High Court cut a former Samsung engineer's sentence to five years for leaking DRAM tech after he joined China's CXMT, CNBC reported.
- New headline Was: “Inside the chip talent war: Trade secrets and rising Chinese rivals”
- Our desk filed its story
A former Samsung Electronics engineer who later joined Chinese memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies was sentenced on Oct. 22 to five years in prison for leaking Samsung technology, CNBC reported, citing Seoul High Court1.
The court reduced the term from seven years at a first trial in April, CNBC said. The employee had joined CXMT in 20161.
CNBC said the case sits in a wider contest over semiconductor know-how as Chinese chipmakers try to close a gap with established memory makers. Counterpoint Research analyst Jeongku Choi told the outlet that Chinese firms are recruiting experienced overseas engineers with high pay and other benefits, and that their expertise has helped ease technical bottlenecks amid U.S. export limits on advanced equipment1.
Counterpoint's Memory Tracker for the second quarter of 2026 projected CXMT's share of global DRAM revenue would reach 10%, CNBC reported. Choi said Chinese manufacturers are now seen as "meaningful competitors"1.
Lawyers in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong told CNBC that protecting chip trade secrets is difficult, especially when courts must separate an engineer's personal skill from a company's proprietary information1.
In 2023, a South Korean court granted Samsung's request to stop a former DRAM researcher from joining U.S. rival Micron, ruling that a two-year non-compete was not excessive and was needed to protect Samsung's technology and business information, JoongAng Ilbo reported, as cited by CNBC1.
A former Samsung employee who asked not to be named told CNBC that a decade ago the company was more concerned about staff leaving for SK Hynix and Micron than for Chinese memory firms. The person said Samsung used two-year non-compete clauses and watched where some departing employees went1.
Samsung and CXMT did not respond to CNBC's request for comment1. The CNBC account does not name the convicted engineer or describe the leaked DRAM information in technical detail1.
