UMC to Pay U.S. Justice Department $60 Million for Infringing Micron's IP

United Microelectronics Corp. has announced that it has reached a deal to settle a legal case filed against it by the U.S. Department of Justice two years ago. UMC will pay millions of dollars for providing a DRAM process technology to Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Company (aka Fujian or JHICC) after illegally obtaining crucial IP from Micron Technology (via TSE MOPS / TrendForce).

Under the terms of the settlement between UMC and the U.S. Justice Department, the contract maker of semiconductors will pay approximately $60 million for dismissing the lawsuit. The resolution — which is still to be approved by the court — solves a major problem for UMC which could have destroyed it. This does not mean that everything is all over for UMC as there is still an ongoing lawsuit filed against the company and its partner JHICC by Micron in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

In a bid to support 'Made in China 2025' program, local authorities in Fujian, China, established JHICC, a local maker of DRAM, in early 2016. The new company had to hire engineers and develop a fabrication process to make competitive memory, but while there are a lot of semiconductor engineers in China, development of a manufacturing technology takes a long time. To that end, JHICC inked a deal with UMC to design a DRAM production process in May 2016, months before it started to construct its $5.65-billion 300-mm fab in July 2016.

UMC is known primarily for its logic fabrication processes. Micron claims that instead of designing a DRAM technology, it poached engineers from Micron’s subsidiaries in Taiwan and requested them to obtain specifications and various peculiarities of Micron's manufacturing processes. The U.S. authorities say that under the terms of the deal between JHICC and UMC, JHICC would provide $300 million for procuring necessary equipment for DRAM development and would pay $400 million to UMC based on the progress of DRAM development.

Eventually, Micron sued both JHICC and UMC for patent infringement, the U.S. Department of Commerce banned JHICC from selling its products in the USA and added it to the Entity List (which means it cannot get U.S.-made equipment, parts, materials, technologies etc), whereas the U.S. Department of Justice filed an indictment against JHICC, UMC, and several engineers charging them with a conspiracy to commit economic espionage and steal IP from Micron.

Micron’s complaint seeks damages, restitution, disgorgement of profits, injunctive relief, and other applicable relief. Since JHICC is not a big DRAM maker and not a significant rival to Micron, even if found guilty by the court, its payments to the U.S. company will not be too high for a government-backed company. But if the court has sided with the U.S. DoJ's allegations and found JHICC and UMC guilty of things like corporate espionage and IP theft, each company would have faced forfeiture and a maximum fine of more than $20 billion. Such sums would have inevitably destroyed both JHICC and UMC.

By settling with the U.S. DoJ, UMC naturally avoided a massive fine. It will still have to settle with Micron. What remains to be seen is how much it will have to pay to the U.S. DoJ and Micron in total and whether after these payments it will still benefit from its contract with JHICC that provided it with $300 million-worth of equipment and $400 million for the process technology. It will also be interesting to see what is going to happen to JHICC.

As such, the Company can now reasonably estimate a probable loss and has recorded an aggregate accrual of $60 million with respect to these matters. As the discussions are continuing and any final resolution will require court approval, there can be no assurance that the Company's efforts to reach a final resolution will be successful, including as to the amount of a fine, or the timing and terms of such a resolution."

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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

5 Comments Comment from the forums

Endymio

Yet more industrial espionage / IP theft flowing to China and Chinese-sponsored firms Finally the US DoJ has begun shutting off the spigot. It makes one wonder why the Obama Administration ignored these thefts for so long.
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spongiemaster

Endymio said:
Yet more industrial espionage / IP theft flowing to China and Chinese-sponsored firms Finally the US DoJ has begun shutting off the spigot. It makes one wonder why the Obama Administration ignored these thefts for so long.
Because its what all administrations have done for decades. Why single out one administration, when they've all been doing it? The problem isn't the government, its the American people who refuse to pay anything but the absolute lowest price right now, regardless of what negative impact it will have on all of us down the line.
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Endymio

spongiemaster said:
Because its what all administrations have done for decades.
All but the present one. The FBI now has over 2,500 active espionage investigations against China and Chinese actors, a large number of individuals in the US has been arrested and prosecuted, and a number of Chinese firms have been sanctioned.

The problem isn't the government, its the American people who refuse to pay anything but the absolute lowest price right now, regardless of what negative impact it will have on all of us down the line.
No matter what the American people purchase, it won't prevent China from stealing technology and using it to manufacture weapons and products to sell to the rest of the world.
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spongiemaster

Endymio said:
No matter what the American people purchase, it won't prevent China from stealing technology and using it to manufacture weapons and products to sell to the rest of the world.
Correct, but as long as we depend on their cheap manufacturing for so many goods, there is no real pressure we can put on them without getting it thrown back in our face twice as hard. The American people don't care about IP theft or human rights violations so long as they can get pens for 40 cents less and electronics a few percent cheaper.
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Endymio

spongiemaster said:
Correct, but as long as we depend on their cheap manufacturing for so many goods, there is no real pressure we can put on them without getting it thrown back in our face twice as hard
Half as hard. At present, the Chinese economy is twice as dependent on foreign exports as we are. In a decade that may no longer be true, but by acting now we have considerably more leverage than do they.
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