Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Former Broadcom engineer charged with stealing secrets

Peter Kisang Kim, a former Broadcom engineer, has been indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on 18 charges of trade secret theft.

The indictment alleges that Kim worked as a principal design engineer at Broadcom in San Jose, California for over 20 years before departing the company for a start-up based in China. The indictment alleges that Kim stole Broadcom trade secrets from the company that were associated with a Broadcom family of chips often used in high-volume data centers, and that these trade secrets were stored in non-public document repositories that were restricted to Broadcom employees within the same suborganization, or to Broadcom employees working on a project. Kim is said to have accessed these files over a nine month period using a laptop issued by the new company.  These trade secrets were associated with test plans, design verification environment files, and design specifications for the Broadcom family of chips.  

Kim has entered a plea of not guilty to the charges.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-broadcom-engineer-charged-theft-trade-secrets