TOKYO--Toshiba Corp. (6502.TO) said Friday it had filed a
lawsuit against SK Hynix Inc. (000660.SE) to seek damages, alleging
that the South Korean chipmaker illegally obtained its NAND flash
memory technology.
The Japanese tech giant said it filed the suit with the Tokyo
District Court on Thursday following the arrest of a former SK
Hynix employee on suspicion of illegally taking Toshiba's
proprietary information and providing it to the South Korean firm
in 2008.
"Moving forward, Toshiba will construct a more robust system for
protecting its intellectual property and preventing its loss,"
Toshiba said in a statement.
SanDisk Corp. also said Thursday it had filed a civil lawsuit in
California against SK Hynix and its U.S. unit, accusing the South
Korean firm of misappropriation of trade secrets related to NAND
flash memory. SanDisk said the employee worked at its joint venture
with Toshiba in Japan and left SanDisk in 2008 to work for SK
Hynix, but didn't identify the engineer.
An SK Hynix spokesman said the company has not received any
formal notification or letter from either Toshiba or SanDisk over
the issue.
"We're internally checking if this is true," he added.
-In-Soo Nam contributed to this article.
Write to Kana Inagaki at kana.inagaki@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires