US trial against alleged Chinese trade secret theft set to begin
US prosecutors will attempt to prove that a Chinese professor conspired with a colleague from the University of Southern California ( USC) to steal and sell trade secrets to the Chinese government and military in a court trial today, October 2.
The defendant, Hao Zhang, was first charged with the offences in 2015, for allegedly stealing trade secrets from semiconductor firm Skyworks Solutions.
According to prosecutors, while working here Zhang conspired to sell the information through a shell company in the Cayman Islands.
The trial, at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, comes amid an aggressive US crackdown on Chinese IP theft which has been escalated by the Trump administration’s trade war with China.
The technology allegedly stolen by Zhang is used to filter unwanted signals in mobile phones and other devices.
According to court documents, Zhang came to the US and enrolled at USC in 2003, where he was a student until 2006. He then went to work for Skyworks until 2009. It was during his time at USC that he met Wei Pang, his alleged co-conspirator.
Prosecutors said the pair then returned to China to teach at Tianjin University, a technical school.
Here, they allegedly used the stolen technology to refine radio-filter technology, apply for patents in both the US and China, and sell trade secrets to the Chinese government and military.
According to court documents, in interviews carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Zhang admitted to have shared a PowerPoint presentation containing Skyworks’ trade secrets.
Prosecutors said Zhang had admitted to sending the document, which was marked “confidential and proprietary,” to his co-defendant Wei Pang.
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