The Tokyo District Court sentenced a 53-year-old man Monday to a five-year prison term and a 3 million yen ($24,819) fine for leaking secret flash memory data from Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. to a South Korean firm.
Yoshitaka Sugita used his position at the time as an engineer at SanDisk Corp., which had formed an alliance with Toshiba, to copy secret files at a Toshiba plant. He then provided the files to the predecessor of SK Hynix Inc., after he started working for the company in July 2008, the court said.
“Sugita (leaked) some of the data to the South Korean company in a bid to secure his position at the new workplace,” Presiding Judge Masahito Murohashi said.
“Leaking data on the world’s smallest memory chip at the time to a foreign country was extremely heinous,” he said, adding that the leakage dented the competitiveness of the Japanese chip maker.
In a separate case, Toshiba agreed in December to receive 33.1 billion yen in damages from SK Hynix to settle its 100 billion yen suit against the South Korean firm.
Filed Under: Industry regulations