Chinese Engineer Steals Technology from American Firm to Smuggle to China

cageymaru

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A jury in California has awarded Lumiled $66 million in damages for industrial espionage committed by one of their former employees. Chinese citizen Gangyi Chen was working for Lumileds in San Jose, CA when he was recruited for a job back in mainland China. After accepting employment from Elec-Tech International (ETI) he proceeded to download thousands of files containing company trade secrets from the Lumiled servers. Then he smuggled them to China and received compensation in the form of promotions to the level of vice president and is one of the highest paid senior executives at the company. ETI contends that the technology pilfered, is now common knowledge in LED manufacturing sector, so no compensation should have been awarded.

Chen's recruitment at ETI was part of a larger campaign to pilfer employees -- and intellectual property -- from Lumileds, the suit claimed. "Several employees recruited from Lumileds were fired or resigned within months of joining, after they refused to share trade secrets of Lumileds," the suit alleged.
 
I wonder if there if there is truly an uptick in industrial espionage or is it just getting more coverage?
 
I wonder if there if there is truly an uptick in industrial espionage or is it just getting more coverage?

More coverage, because of who is President. This has been going on for literally centuries; it's just much easier to smuggle things out now (USB Pen Drive or CD/DVDs are easier to conceal then rolls of blueprints and schematics).

The real fail here is allowing general users free access to download to removable media; that's a massive no-no.
 
More coverage, because of who is President. This has been going on for literally centuries; it's just much easier to smuggle things out now (USB Pen Drive or CD/DVDs are easier to conceal then rolls of blueprints and schematics).

It has, but one thing that is different is that it is state sanctioned. China supports its companies stealing from the west, and even has cyber warfare groups within its military with the sole purpose of stealing tech from western companies so that they can give it to domestic ones.

The Chinese government sees disregarding international norms on intellectual property as their right and justified way of becoming the next leader in tech. This needs to be countered much more fervently than we are currently doing.

The real fail here is allowing general users free access to download to removable media; that's a massive no-no.

Outside of secret military facilities and defense contractors working on blackout programs, where is this ever the case? If this is a fail, then it is something everyone is failing at. I have worked at many companies over the years and at every last one of them I have had full access to all documentation, and the ability to plug whatever I want in via USB, or even dump it over the internet.

I presume these things are logged, but if I didn't care about losing my job and burning my bridges (like the guy in this news story) I could probably make off with everything, and this has been the case at ever last one of the companies I have worked for.

I think it just isn't realistic in a modern office to expect these types of restrictions. People have to be able to conveniently do their work, and if you make things to difficult for them, you lose talent. There is an expectation that security may need to be tight for classified government projects, but outside of that engineers expect to be able to do whatever they want in order to get their work done. Clamping down on and limiting their flexibility is probably just going to make a not so insignificant proportion disgruntled and look for work elsewhere.
 
You get this sort of "tech theft" in large Communist countries. Russia/Warsaw Pact were stealing hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tech back in the Cold War days, too (saved them trillions in R&D).

China wasn't doing nearly as much stealing then, due to internal turmoil (Mao Zedong era).
 
You get this sort of "tech theft" in large Communist countries. Russia/Warsaw Pact were stealing hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tech back in the Cold War days, too (saved them trillions in R&D).

China wasn't doing nearly as much stealing then, due to internal turmoil (Mao Zedong era).
I bet the usa does this just as much...you just never hear of it happening.
 
I was on a discord server with 2 other individuals, one guy was streaming and the other was just chatting with him.
The conversation brought up china and the guy mentioned how china was known for IP Theft.
The streamer who is Canadian threatened to ban him because he was making a racist statement about china.
I laughed and indicated that China has been accused of IP theft for decades and asked if he wanted proof.
 
I bet the usa does this just as much...you just never hear of it happening.
No, not at all. Mostly because the Chinese don't really have anything we want to steal. Also because the Chinese government owns controlling interest in every company in that country, and they have no problem putting "national interests" ahead of ethics or international law. It's a very different story in the US; here you can be sued to stealing IP and the courts will enforce any judgements you win.
 
Exactly right.
This is all part of China long term strategy to gain superiority in global markets. R&D? Hell no! STEAL the technology. The sickening part is US policies aid and abed this.

They are just being good engineers by reusing.
 
It has, but one thing that is different is that it is state sanctioned. China supports its companies stealing from the west, and even has cyber warfare groups within its military with the sole purpose of stealing tech from western companies so that they can give it to domestic ones.

The Chinese government sees disregarding international norms on intellectual property as their right and justified way of becoming the next leader in tech. This needs to be countered much more fervently than we are currently doing.

State sponsored industrial espionage goes back to the 1910's; it's always been there.

Outside of secret military facilities and defense contractors working on blackout programs, where is this ever the case? If this is a fail, then it is something everyone is failing at. I have worked at many companies over the years and at every last one of them I have had full access to all documentation, and the ability to plug whatever I want in via USB, or even dump it over the internet.

I presume these things are logged, but if I didn't care about losing my job and burning my bridges (like the guy in this news story) I could probably make off with everything, and this has been the case at ever last one of the companies I have worked for.

I think it just isn't realistic in a modern office to expect these types of restrictions. People have to be able to conveniently do their work, and if you make things to difficult for them, you lose talent. There is an expectation that security may need to be tight for classified government projects, but outside of that engineers expect to be able to do whatever they want in order to get their work done. Clamping down on and limiting their flexibility is probably just going to make a not so insignificant proportion disgruntled and look for work elsewhere.

When every PC is connected to a central server, why do you need to burn portable media? It's not that onerous a limitation; people are complaining more because their routine is changed more then anything else.

Let me be clear: If you care at all about corporate security, you can NOT allow the general user to burn media.
 
More coverage, because of who is President. This has been going on for literally centuries; it's just much easier to smuggle things out now (USB Pen Drive or CD/DVDs are easier to conceal then rolls of blueprints and schematics).

The real fail here is allowing general users free access to download to removable media; that's a massive no-no.

We all know that now, but back in the day this stuff wasn't controlled as it is now. In fact, I think on some older Windows systems there wasn't even a registry setting to limit burn rights, etc.
 
It has, but one thing that is different is that it is state sanctioned. China supports its companies stealing from the west, and even has cyber warfare groups within its military with the sole purpose of stealing tech from western companies so that they can give it to domestic ones..........................

Give this man a cigar (y)
 
I bet the usa does this just as much...you just never hear of it happening.


And we're just so good at it no other countries ever catch us :cautious:

The spy game is old as the hills and we play it as well as most, but when you have been leading most of the world in tech for decades, why you gotta go dumpster diving for?
 
Hate to make a overly political statement, but toughness is needed on China on IP theft and trade, so I'm glad Trump is keeping the pressure on. Would have liked the TPP passed through.....it also would have put some hurt on China.
 
Never had regard for our IP before why shoukd they now. Countries steal all the time. Its just that china is a hot button. Thats sadly how state sponsored internet attacks work..
 
This makes me think of the absurd precautions in the Fallout universe to prevent corporate espionage. No bathroom breaks while at work, period lol. Also an armed robot guard roaming the halls. But yeah, that had to be somewhat important information to that company to promote the guy to VP.
 
Never had regard for our IP before why shoukd they now. Countries steal all the time. Its just that china is a hot button. Thats sadly how state sponsored internet attacks work..

You gotta be kidding.

Since when did companies not care that their engineering property rights were stolen?

I can tell you that since I first got my security clearance back in 1982 it has been an issue that was taken serious. Saying otherwise is .... ill informed.
 
Here's a thought. Hire American workers rather than Chinese H1B's and you'll have less espionage/stolen IP concerns.

HAH! Right, you think Americans are somehow less susceptible to being bribed?
 
HAH! Right, you think Americans are somehow less susceptible to being bribed?

Yup, I do.

I'm not saying you can't bribe an American, but at least an American generally will have the feeling that he's doing something wrong. A Chinese citizen from their culture, "What? He bribed me, I'm supposed to turn down money!"

Furthermore, as a foreign citizen they are far less likely to feel any remorse, in fact, you could play the whole patriotism thing, "You're helping your country".
 
Here's a thought. Hire American workers rather than Chinese H1B's and you'll have less espionage/stolen IP concerns.
But can you trust Americans that look like Chinese and have last names like Li, Zhang, Yang, and such? Because you never know. They are part of the "changing demographics".
 
But can you trust Americans that look like Chinese and have last names like Li, Zhang, Yang, and such? Because you never know. They are part of the "changing demographics".


I don't care what their name is or their skin color or the slant of their eyes. Being an American isn't about any of those things. Being an American is about doing what so many of you do hear every day in this forum. It's about basic principles and fairness and ethical behavior, about not being a dick to others. Assholes are fine, but dicks are just dicks.

I think you get it.

And there is always a chance I missed some sarcasm here so give me a break if I did (y)
 
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You gotta be kidding.

Since when did companies not care that their engineering property rights were stolen?

I can tell you that since I first got my security clearance back in 1982 it has been an issue that was taken serious. Saying otherwise is .... ill informed.
Hope your not refering to military and your talking about a specific company because I have a lot of concuring opinions from the 2.

I hope wherever you work they take it seriously and dont allow materials off site.
 
In EA (the office I worked in) we had mass storage turned off by GPO on all the machines
Worked fine. People could charge their shit but couldn't use USB drives etc.
Not perfect by any means, but it was a deterrent for the masses
 
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