Court in China bars sales of Micron chips over patent dispute

"Micron Technology is temporarily barred from selling 26 products in China while a court works on a case where United Microelectronics is accusing the US chipmaker of patent infringement. The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court handed down a preliminary injunction affecting sales of Micron's memory chips, memory sticks and hard drives, UMC said."

http://money.cnn.com/2018/07/04/technology/micron-china-umc-chip-ban/index.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ales-in-patent-case-taiwans-umc-idUSKBN1JT2DL

After market upgrades thru Micron is stopped in Main Land China

 

And let the trade wars begin.

 

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have become the target of industrial espionage by Chinese memory chip manufacturers.

 

Micron filed a case against UMC (Taiwan) initially because UMC took Micron trade secrets via two former Micron employees. UMC apparently has a joint venture with a mainland Chinese company. No wonder the retaliation against Micron, UMC seems protected because of the venture and probably mainland government interests.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...-umcs-trade-secrets-debacle-is-a-red-fla.aspx

That ban though, with so much production in China, what a hit. It could also be a warning to the US in retaliation for the ZTE ban (included parts supply ban from US companies) that now got lifted.

I suppose they were lucky at least it wasn’t 3D-XPoint/Optane data from Micron-Intel joint collaboration.

Apple’s car division got burned this week as well after a Chinese employee suddenly told his manager he was going to move to a Chinese rival. Manager checked logs and found large amounts of data downloaded within the last few days and the guy eventually admitted to cops of his actions.

With trade escalation between the two countries this stuff is only going to occur more frequently. If a real trade war started China would be the one to lose though, of course the “winner” would also suffer terriblly, hence why even Chinese tariffs are specifically aimed for Trump’s support base. The ZTE ban apparently was also an eye opener for the Chinese government as it showed how vulnerable their businesses could be technology wise with the ban from sourcing US components for ZTE. I heard a great discussion on that on NPR via a Reuters analyst.

 

Another side effect for both countries is investment in local build out of manufacturing, creating jobs in both countries - to become self-sufficient.

IDK if that is a goal for the US specifically, but it is another campaign promise to bring back manufacturing and jobs to the US - this self-sufficiency pressure would help make that happen.