The chip design relied on plagiarism from HiSilicon, and the core team of Gaorong Xiaomi Jiayu invested hundreds of millions of chips was arrested
Recently, according to the official WeChat message of the Economic Crime Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Shanghai police recently successfully detected a case of infringement of chip technology trade secrets and arrested 14 criminal suspects.
According to the official information, in February 2021, in order to obtain illegal benefits, Zhang, Liu and others, the former executives of the rights company, set up a technology company after leaving the company, and induced a number of R&D personnel of the original rights company to jump to their company by paying high salaries and equity inducements, and instructed these personnel to illegally obtain the chip technology information of the rights company through excerpts and screenshots before leaving the company, and plagiarized and applied it to the same type of chip designed by Zhang's company, in an attempt to make illegal profits. After identification, 40 technical points of the infringing chip technology are more than 90% identical to the secret points of the trade secrets of the rights company, constituting substantial sameness.
According to relevant reports, the rights company in this case is Huawei HiSilicon, the infringing company is Zunpai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zunpai Communication"), and Zhang is Zhang Kun, the founder and CEO of Zunpai Communication.
In fact, as early as April 19 this year, the Shanghai police, with the strong cooperation of the Jiangsu police, carried out a centralized network collection operation in Shanghai and Suzhou, and successfully arrested 14 core members of the company involved in the case, including Zhang, Liu and others, and investigated and dealt with them in a timely manner before the infringing chips were put into mass production. At present, four main suspects, including Zhang and Liu, have been arrested by the police on suspicion of infringing on trade secrets, and the remaining 10 suspects have been released on bail pending trial in accordance with the law.
In August this year, Shanghai HiSilicon and Zunpai Communications made public the first-instance non-litigation preservation review ruling on their applications for pre-litigation property preservation. According to the documents, the applicant, Shanghai Hisilicon Technology Co., Ltd., applied to the court for pre-litigation property preservation, requesting to freeze the bank deposits of 95 million yuan of the respondent Zumpai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. and its Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, and Shenzhen branches and its subsidiary, Shanghai Zumpai Communication Technology Co., Ltd., or to seal, freeze, and seize other assets with corresponding values.
Tianyancha information shows that Zunpai Communication is committed to providing high-performance, full-ecological smart scene chipsets and solutions for homes and enterprises, and is currently developing Wi-Fi 6 router chips and complete solutions at full speed. In the process of establishment, it has obtained 3 rounds of financing, each round of financing has exceeded 100 million yuan, and the investors include Gaorong Capital, Xiaomi, Jiayu Capital, Hushan Capital, Skyline Capital, etc.
It is worth noting that due to the fact that the investment involves Xiaomi, Xiaomi has also received the influence of public opinion.
On December 24, Xiaomi released the "Statement on Rumors Related to Our Company's Investment Business" on its official Weibo, saying that Hanxing Venture Capital Co., Ltd., an investment company under Xiaomi Group, participated in the financing of a chip company in 2022, which is a normal financial investment behavior. As one of the company's many shareholders, Xiaomi is neither the earliest investor, nor the largest investor, nor the dominant investor in several rounds of funding. At the same time, Xiaomi is not involved in the direct management and operation of the chip company, nor does it have any intellectual property rights or technical cooperation with the company.