Overview
- The Seoul Central District Court on Wednesday sentenced a 56-year-old former Samsung researcher to seven years for leaking DRAM manufacturing technology to ChangXin Memory Technologies.
- The court said the breach violated the Industrial Technology Protection Act and involved “national core technology,” which carries harsher penalties under South Korean law.
- Prosecutors, cited by Yonhap, said the defendant received about 2.9 billion won over six years from CXMT in return for detailed process data used to make DRAM chips.
- Authorities say the leaked know-how helped China advance toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers, which stacks DRAM chips to boost speed and cut power use.
- Samsung declined to comment and CXMT did not respond, and a related case advanced Thursday when an appeals court gave another ex-Samsung manager six years and four months after a Supreme Court-ordered retrial expanded liabilities for tech leaks.