By Kim Yoo-chul
SK hynix, the world’s second-biggest memory chip supplier, is being sued for alleged industrial espionage by Japan’s Toshiba and SanDisk from the United States in separately filed lawsuits, the company acknowledged Sunday.
“Toshiba filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court over the alleged theft of secret data on NAND flash memory technology,” SK hynix said.
A spokesman said the firm has yet to receive legal papers from the Japanese court. He said that it will first have to review details of the case before deciding on what action to take.
Toshiba wants the Korean company to pay 1.05 trillion won in damages. The spokesman for Toshiba Korea wasn’t available for comment, Sunday.
SanDisk and Toshiba have been partners for years in producing flash memory chip technology used in mobile devices. Toshiba is the world’s No. 2 NAND flash memory chip producer; however, SK hynix is the global leader in the production of pure DRAM chips.
Flash card memory supplier SanDisk filed a separate claim in the Santa Clara Superior Court, California. It is seeking huge compensation and an injunction, according to analysts and fund managers who’ve invested in both SK hynix and SanDisk stocks.
Toshiba said an engineer at SanDisk stole classified information from a NAND flash factory in Japan, operated by Toshiba, and passed it to SK hynix.
It claims the engineer in question joined SK hynix in the summer of 2008, though SK said the engineer has since quit the company. The case is now being investigated in Japan.
Market watchers in Seoul have questioned the reasons for the litigation as SK hynix has jointly developed next-generation chips with STT-MRAM, regarded as next-generation chips, since 2011.
The two firms, which also signed a cross-licensing deal in NAND flash chips, are sharing information for the development of new chips, according to officials.
“This is, I think, a highly-planned plot by Toshiba. Leading Japanese newspapers reported the case before an official announcement by the police came out,” said a banking industry source by telephone.
“Right after such media coverage, Toshiba filed a lawsuit against SK hynix. By filing a lawsuit, Toshiba aims to get a better position over SK hynix for upcoming discussions over patents for next-generation chips,”