Two Chinese professors and four officials of a Tianjin, China-based company have been slapped with 37 counts of espionage and theft of U.S. trade secrets in California, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday.
Tianjin University professors Hao Zhang, 36, and Wei Pang, 35, were charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage, conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets, economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, the DOJ said in a press statement.
The indictment that alleged they stole recipes, source code, specifications, presentations, design layouts and other secret documents about thin-film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) from Avago Technologies of Colorado and Skyworks Solutions Inc. (Skyworks) of Massachusetts while they were separately working for the two companies from 2005 to 2009.
Zhang, who was arrested on Saturday when he arrived at the Los Angeles airport from China, and Pang simultaneously resigned from the companies in 2009 and returned to China, where they partnered with Tianjin University to put up ROFS Microsystem and a plant that will mass produce FBAR.
Charged along with Zhang and Pang were Jinping Chen, 41, also a professor at Tianjin University and a member of the board of directors for ROFS Microsystem; Huisui Zhang, 34, a former classmate of Pang and Zhang when they were studying for a master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) in 2006; Chong Zhou, 26, a Tianjin University graduate student and a design engineer at ROFS Microsystem; and Zhao Gang, 39, the general manager of ROFS Microsystem.
Chen, Huisui Zhang and Gang are charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage and conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets. Zhou is charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage, conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets, economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
Except for Zhang, the others are still in China.
Zhang and Pang met at USC during their doctoral studies in electrical engineering in the early 2000s, according to the indictment. While at the university, they researched FBAR technology, with funding by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which develops technology for military applications.
FBAR technology filters incoming and outgoing wireless signals so that a mobile phone only receives and transmits the specific communications intended by the user, according to the DOJ press release. In addition to consumer applications, FBAR is used in several military and communications technologies.
When Zang and Pang earned their doctorates in 2005, Skyworks Solutions and Avago Technologies, respectively, employed them. The two firms design, develop and supply FBAR.
The indictment said that in 2006 and 2007, the two and other co-conspirators prepared a business plan for manufacturing FBAR technology in China and proposed partnership with mainland universities and other investors.
Officials of Tianjin University, which the Ministry of Education of China operates, flew to California in 2008 and met with Zhang and his accomplices. They agreed to build a FBAR plant in an industrial zone in Tianjin.
The following year, Zhang and Pang resigned from Skyworks and Avago and transferred to the University of Tianjin, which later built the FBAR factory.
Zhang appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia G. Rosenberg of the Central District of California in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. He was ordered detained in San Jose and to appear before the U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California at a future date.
