The chairman and the chief executive officer of Via
Technologies, a supplier of PC chipsets and other semiconductors,
have been accused of copyright infringement and industrial
espionage.
The Taipei District Public Prosecutors Office has prepared an
indictment that accuses Via president and chief executive officer
Wenchi Chen and his wife, Via chairman Cher Wang, as well as Via
engineer Jeffrey Chang, of copyright infringement and industrial
espionage, said Richard Brown, the company's associate
vice-president of marketing.
"We haven't received the indictment yet and there have been
conflicting reports about what it actually involves," Brown said.
"The indictment should come in the mail over the next couple
of days."
As far as Via has been able to ascertain, the charges levelled
against Chen, Wang and Chang in the indictment allege that the
three conspired and stole technology from one of Via's customers,
networking equipment supplier D-Link. The prosecutor has asked for
a four-year jail term for Wang and Chen and a three-year sentence
for Chang.
In a statement, D-Link said that, "The circumstances of this
matter do not have [an] immediate impact on D-Link's operations.
D-Link is evaluating the impact on the value of the technologies
involved in this matter."
This is not the first time that Via has been embroiled in
allegations of stolen intellectual property.
The company is being sued by Taiwanese optical chip supplier
Mediatek, which has accused Via of gaining improper access to
Mediatek technology and copying code used in its optical disc
controller firmware.
Sumner Lemon writes for IDG News Service