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A San Jose know-how employee and his long-time colleague from Union Metropolis are accused in a brand new lawsuit of stealing digital units and commerce secrets and techniques from their then-employer and posting proof of the theft on-line that contained traceable digital fingerprints.
Earlier than quitting computer-circuit big Microchip Know-how and becoming a member of a Bay Space firm, Cang Nguyen of San Jose and Jerry Chang of Union Metropolis “surreptitiously stole” digital units and proprietary data from the Arizona-based Microchip, the lawsuit alleged.
“Nguyen and Chang did so to interrupt into a longtime business — bypassing intensive growth work — and steal gross sales from Microchip,” claimed the lawsuit in San Jose U.S. District Court docket towards the 2 males and a brand new firm known as GTMi that Chang began in 2018.
Microchip is searching for a court docket order forcing GTMi to return allegedly stolen units and confidential data, and barring GTMi and the 2 males from any use of Microchip units and proprietary know-how. The corporate can also be searching for unspecified financial damages.
GTMi, Nguyen and Chang didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
At concern are Microchip’s pc capacitors, made at a Santa Clara manufacturing unit the corporate mentioned within the lawsuit it shut down. Earlier than closing the plant, Microchip made a provide of the capacitors — which it makes use of in radio-frequency units offered to companies in aerospace, protection, shopper electronics and home equipment — to supply stock for years to come back, in response to the lawsuit.
Microchip claims it found the alleged theft after it misplaced a sale of radio-frequency units to a decades-long buyer. The client as an alternative bought the merchandise at a cheaper price from GTMi, an “upstart entity” with places of work in San Jose and Union Metropolis that Microchip had by no means heard of, the lawsuit alleged.
“Microchip set about reverse engineering sure of GTMi’s merchandise that it was in a position to get hold of by means of distributors,” in response to the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The investigation turned up purported proof that GTMi was distributing stolen capacitors belonging to Microchip, a 22,000-employee firm valued at $50 billion on the inventory market as of Friday. The capacitors had been similar to Microchip’s, right down to a grounding element distinctive to Microchip’s fabrication course of, the lawsuit alleged.
Investigators additionally discovered GTMi had posted on-line performance-specifications sheets for merchandise that in a single case contained the identify of the Microchip subsidiary that made it, and in one other case contained a drawing mistake from an unpublished Microchip schematic, the lawsuit claimed.
Metadata embedded within the sheets confirmed Nguyen’s digital fingerprints on them, from his time at Microchip, the lawsuit alleged.
“GTMi is unfairly competing towards Microchip by improperly utilizing Microchip’s personal customized tunable capacitors and Microchip’s proprietary, confidential data as if it had been GTMi’s,” the lawsuit claimed.
Nguyen and Chang had labored collectively extensively at Microsemi Corp., which Microchip acquired in 2018, with Nguyen a supervisor and engineer, and Chang a director and supervisor, the lawsuit alleged. Chang left Microsemi in 2016, and in 2018 filed papers to include GTMi, in response to the lawsuit. Nguyen stop Microchip in 2019 and instantly joined Chang at GTMi, the lawsuit alleged.
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