Mora Grilled in TSMC vs. SMIC Deposition
Marco Mora, now the COO at SMIC, was deposed in video testimony taken in Shanghai, China, about alleged transfers of process recipes in 2000 and 2001 from TSMC. The deposition was shown to the jury Monday in the TSMC vs. SMIC civil trial being held in Oakland, Calif.
David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 9/15/2009
A video-taped deposition that featured controversial emails played a key role Monday in the TSMC vs. SMIC civil trial, now ongoing in California Superior Court in Oakland, Calif.
Showing emails and other documents dating back to the early days of the company's founding in 2000, lawyers asked Marco Mora, the chief operating officer of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC, Shanghai, China), about alleged transfers of process recipes and other intellectual property from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan). The deposition, taken over two days earlier this year in Shanghai, was shown to the jury Monday. The trial, which is expected to last 50-60 days, is being broadcast by the Courtroom View Network (CVN, New York), largely on a pay-per-view basis.
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SMIC COO Marco Mora was asked about emails to Katy Liu, allegedly asking the then-TSMC employee for 'detailed' process flows. |
Mora, a native of Italy who earlier had worked as a fab manager in Italy for Texas Instruments Inc. (TI, Dallas), Micron Technology Inc. (Boise, Idaho) and SGS-Thompson (which became STMicroelectronics), developed a relationship with SMIC CEO Richard Chang, who worked at TI for ~20 years. In Taiwan, Mora worked for Chang at World Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (WSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan), managing WSMC's two fabs. The company was sold to TSMC on Jan. 8, 2000, and Mora briefly managed the former WSMC fab, which became Fab 8b of TSMC.
Katy Liu, another ex-TI employee who went to Taiwan in 1994, continued to work at TSMC after Chang, Mora and several others moved to Shanghai to set up SMIC in April 2000. Liu, using her personal email address (clairc@ms4.hinet.net), corresponded with Mora and other SMIC managers several times. According to the emails, Liu was asked by Mora to provide a "detailed equipment list" for TSMC fabs 8a and 8b, as well as the materials vendor list and materials usage rates at TSMC, sought by the SMIC project planning team.
In June 2000, according to the emails shown to Mora during the deposition, Mora sent an email to Liu, who was planning to visit Shanghai in August. "I need a help from you to pull out some information," Mora wrote to Liu, creating a list of the "detailed process flows" for TSMC's 0.35, 0.28, 0.22 and 0.18 µm processes.
"You asked her to steal them," the TSMC attorney said to Mora during the deposition. "No," Mora replied, who then was asked what "pull out" meant. He replied that he meant to "collect" the information from Liu, who later joined SMIC as part of the new fab projects team.
In a later exchange, Mora was shown an email about his planned visit to Taiwan in which he asked to meet with a former colleague. "Since I am Italian, they are not tracing me, and my visit to Hsinchu will be quite safe," Mora wrote to his former co-worker.
Mora conceded little during the several hours of the video-taped deposition. Superior Court Judge Steven Brick told the jury that Mora's presence in the courtroom was not required, since he is not a resident of California. In their opening statement last week, the SMIC attorneys said they will show that the information from Liu was not used by SMIC.
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Marco Mora being deposed by TSMC attorneys. |
Much of the deposition involved TSMC lawyers asking Mora to read his own emails into the camera. In one exchange, the TSMC attorneys showed Mora a list of process technology offerings from SMIC. By December 2001, the company was offering four different processes. A year later, it had 18 processes available.
Mora was asked if the SMIC processes were copies of the TSMC recipes and process flows. He answered "no," and then was asked if they were "developed on your own" by SMIC. "Yes," Mora answered. However, at another point in the deposition he was asked if SMIC had a technology development organization in the first year after its founding. "There was no fab, no technology development," he answered. Mora then was asked if there could be technology development before equipment was installed. "No," Mora said, who said that it was mid-2001 before SMIC set up a technology development organization.
The current lawsuit was initiated by TSMC in 2006 following a comprehensive legal settlement between the rival foundries negotiated in 2005, involving a $175M payment by SMIC. TSMC now contends that after the 2005 settlement, SMIC executives ordered SMIC staff to destroy any documents relating to TSMC, despite sections of the 2005 settlement that called for SMIC to place documents and other relevant material into a document bank. Instead, according to TSMC, SMIC changed the name of computer files that included TSMC property and engaged in document destruction.
Last Thursday, Judge Brick issued a 21-page ruling, instructing the jury that based on the evidence, SMIC had engaged in document destruction, thereby violating the 2005 settlement.
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