18 Months In Prison For Making iPad 2 Cases 285
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."
Only One Guy Got 18 There Were Also Monetary Fines (Score:5, Informative)
"Almost two months ago three individuals were charged with selling the designs of Apple's latest tablet to Maita Electronics for 200,000 yuan (about $30,857.60 USD). They have now been sentenced in Shenzhen City: 'Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him 150,000 yuan ($23,000) for buying the design from two Foxconn workers ... Foxconn employee Lin Kecheng, was sentenced to 14 months and fined 100,000 yuan, while another worker identified as Hou Pengna was given a two-year sentence suspended for one year and fined 30,000 yuan. All three were convicted of the crime of violating commercial secrets.'"
And only one was sentenced to 18 months ... unless the associated press [google.com] article I quoted was wrong.
Re:You would get a similar results in the US (Score:4, Informative)
Would you like your oppression with pickles or with mayonnaise? It's probably a similar corrupt corporatocracy situation in many parts of the world, with actions which should be dealt with in civil court criminalized. In the US, The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 brought us (among other insults) US Code Title 18, Part 1, Section 1832, which criminalizes such acts, stating that anyone who steals, or receives or possesses or uses without authorization, a trade secret, or merely ATTEMPTS same, shall be fined, or imprisoned up to 10 years, or both. The fine is limited to $5 million for an organization, but is WITHOUT ANY STATED LIMIT for an individual.
Section 1831 deals with basically the same offenses "to benefit a foreign power," which means that section 1832, giving the lie to the name of the bill, has nothing to do with true espionage.
This wonderful legislation, like the DMCA, was brought to you by a cooperation between tweedledee Democrats and tweedledum Republicans in Congress and the White House.