According to the official Weibo report of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, reporters recently learned from the Intellectual Property Procuratorate of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate that,The Supreme People's Procuratorate directed the Shanghai Procuratorate to handle the case of Zunpai infringing Huawei's HiSilicon chip technology trade secrets. The verdict was reached on July 28. None of the 14 defendants filed an appeal within ten days. The first-instance judgment has now taken effect. It is reported that the illegally obtained technical information in this case was valued at 317 million yuan.
It is understood that HiSilicon is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei. Huawei launched the Wi-Fi chip R&D project in 2011, and HiSilicon was later responsible for the project. It invested a lot of manpower and material resources in long-term independent research and development, obtained the corresponding technical information of the Wi-Fi chip, and adopted reasonable confidentiality measures.
The defendant Zhang was originally the head of HiSilicon's radio frequency chip development department. After leaving his job, he founded Zunpai Company. He recruited Zhou A, Liu, Zhou B, Gu and others to join before and after the establishment of the new company, and appointed four people as senior executives and responsible for the corresponding technical departments. During this period, Zhang and other five people discussed together and decided to develop Wi-Fi chips similar to those of HiSilicon.
Thereafter, in order to shorten the research and development cycle, quickly put into mass production, and speed up attracting financing, under Zhang's instructions, Zhou and others continued to recruit seven HiSilicon employees, including Gao and Wang, to join Zunpai Company on the condition of good salary, development prospects, etc. Before and after their resignation, the seven people, at the request of Zunpai Company, either on their own or in collusion with employees Zhao and Tu who were still working at HiSilicon, obtained HiSilicon's technical information by illegal means such as screenshots, transcriptions, and WeChat transmissions for use in Zunpai's chip research and development.
On April 10, 2024, the Third Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Procuratorate filed a public prosecution against Zhang and 14 other people in court for the crime of infringement of trade secrets. During the review and prosecution, the procuratorate interrogated the defendant in accordance with the law, informed the trade secret rights holder of the litigation rights and obligations, and focused on examining whether the technical information involved in the case was non-public knowledge and identical.
According to the case handling team of the procuratorate, this is a very typical case of trade secret infringement by an "insider", and it is very difficult to handle the case.On the one hand, there are more than 40 pieces of technical information involved in the case and they are cutting-edge technologies. In order to break down professional barriers, the case handling team hired a number of senior experts in the communications industry to provide professional interpretation opinions on the technical facts with the help of their "outside brains". Through repeated and cross-examination discussions, they provided guidance for subsequent legal decisions. It lays a solid foundation for sexual analysis and ensures the accuracy of legal judgment; on the other hand, there are 14 defendants, each involved in different technical information infringements. The case handling team must accurately distinguish the role of each defendant in the joint crime and determine the secret points of each defendant's involvement in the case and their valuation amount. In the process of handling the case, the procuratorial organs also formulated and issued procuratorial suggestions accurately based on the internal management loopholes of the victim enterprises, provided the enterprises with "vulnerability reports", and provided an "upgrade blueprint" for the enterprise's "immune system". In the face of the defendant's defense in court, the prosecutor carried out court education in a progressive manner from three levels: evidence, legal theory and emotion. In the end, the defendants all voluntarily pleaded guilty.
On July 28, the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate Court made a first-instance judgment and adopted the prosecution opinions and sentencing recommendations of the procuratorate.All 14 defendants were found guilty of infringement of trade secrets. Among them, Zhang was sentenced to six years in prison and fined 3 million yuan; Zhou A, Liu, Zhou B, and Gu were sentenced to five to three years in prison and fined from 1.5 million to 1.2 million yuan respectively; Gao, Wang and other nine people were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment and suspended, and fined from 1 million to 200,000 yuan.
The person in charge of the Intellectual Property Prosecution Office of the Supreme People's Procuratorate said that trade secrets are important intellectual property rights in modern economic society. They are not only related to the security of key core technologies of enterprises, but also related to the high-quality development of the country. In recent years, the procuratorial organs have continuously increased the judicial protection of trade secrets, cracked down on crimes of infringement of trade secrets in accordance with the law, and used the power of the rule of law to serve innovation and development.
