A handful of employees have trade secrets stolen from the Dutch chipmachinemaker ASML. That confirms the company after an article in het Financieele Dagblad, that claimed to be “Chinese spies” went. Of a national conspiracy is according to ASML, this did not occur.
ASML confirms in a statement to have been robbed of proprietary information by a handful of employees. A few among them possessed a Chinese passport, but there were also people with other nationalities involved in the robbery. “Chinese spionagepraktijken”, such as The Financieele Dagblad reported, according to the company is not involved. the
ASML stresses, further, that the issue will have no impact on future deals of the company in China.
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het Financieele Dagblad reported today, as the first that Chinese spies as ASML employees for years had access to the internal networks in an American subsidiary of ASML.
The news was later in the day tempered by ASML itself. According to the company is in the focus of the article an earlier court case in the US highlights. Employees would then include source codes, software, pricing strategies and secret manuals have been stolen. In that case, it was ASML competitor XTAL found guilty of the misuse of confidential information.
ASML says the outcome of the case in november last year several times have mentioned in publications. The compensation that ASML had to be paid in, amounts to 223 million dollars. It is according to ASML’s still unclear to what extent this damage can be cashed at now bankrupt XTAL.
