In June 2020, a Taiwanese court ruled that engineers from United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) stole trade secrets from U.S. company Micron Technology. According to the court, the operation conducted by Taiwanese engineers was backed by the PRC government, and the information stolen was shared with a government-backed Chinese company. The district court in Taiching fined UMC $3.4 million, with the engineers jailed for periods between four to seven years. In November 2018, the U.S Department of Justice had already indicted UMC, the Chinese state-backed company and three engineers for conspiring to steal trade secrets from Micron. The FBI’s evidence was used by the Taiwanese court when issuing their sentence. According to the U.S. investigators, the PRC-state owned company was able to jumpstart China’s dynamic random-access memory industry thanks to Chinese espionage in the United States.