18 Months In Prison For Making iPad 2 Cases

decora writes "Loretta Chao of the The Wall Street Journal reports on three people in China who were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months in prison for a plot to make iPad 2 protective cases before the tablet's official release. The plan allegedly involved R&D man Lin Kecheng of Hon Hai Precision Industry Company (FoxConn) selling image data to Hou Pengna, who then passed it to Xiao Chengsong, a manager at MacTop. The charges? One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.' The decision was handed down by the Shenzen Baoan People's Court on June 16."

Re:Not quite.

[second_coming]

The motivation being, if they don't crack down on it then big business will pull out of China and go somewhere more 'trustworthy'. The likelihood is lots of foreign business will pull out of China over the next few years anyway due to the huge increase in production (ie. wage) costs.