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Comment by rsj_hn | Hacker News Reader

The headline is misleading. The IP was "stolen" by an American company. I put stolen in quotes because an employee of US firm Brion stole his own IP, in the sense that he developed tech working for Brion, and then ASML acquired Brion, and the employee left and started a new US company, XTAL, using some of the old tech that he developed at Brion. XTAL paid a huge fine to ASML, and then the same employee went to China and was hired by a Chinese company. This Chinese company then raised some money in Chinese capital markets. That's the story.

However there is no evidence that the Chinese company stole any IP from ASML, and certainly there has been no court case or finding of fact suggesting that the Chinese company is using the stolen IP. The offense committed by the Chinese company is hiring the employee of the American company who continued to use IP that was sold to ASML.

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I wonder how this works from a legal standpoint.

As a contractor I waive the rights to the code I write and any associated documentation BUT it's explicitly stated in my contract that I am entitled to use the general, technical know-how I acquired during the project how I wish.

The spirit is that it's unreasonable to expect from me to pretend I don't know how to approach problems I've been solving all this time.

Legally, these things are usually done either with patent law, in which case it doesn't matter what the employee does but what the company does, or as violating terms of employment, in which case it's not really an IP law being violated but contract law. This is where noncompete agreements and the like enter into the picture.

Really it's a mess, because of course you are going to take your experience and knowledge with you. Bottom line, those employees are finally free of ASML after the legal settlement with the XTAL lawsuit, and have no contract with them that they can be accused of violating, and so they can go work for whomever they want. If the new employer violates an ASML patent, then ASML can go after the employer like anyone else. But who these employees work for isn't ASML's concern anymore.

Clickbait title mixed with confirmation bias...

> The offense committed by the Chinese company is hiring the

> employee of the American company who continued to use IP

> that was sold to ASML.

In the except above, you've described the means by which the company stole the IP and is using the IP illegally. How can you possibly believe that the company didn't steal IP after writing this? Did you forget a word/sentence/paragraph that explains this obvious contradiction?

I did no such thing. You are saying that this engineer, who is obviously talented, should never again be hired in his field, because anyone who hires him will only hire him to steal this (now quite ancient) tech and not for asking him to continue to innovate or even just be a productive worker.

So do you really believe this or is this just an anti-China thing? Fun Fact: Many innovators in Silicon valley did the exact same thing, discovering something at one company, and then taking it to another where it was more fully developed. They then went on to continue to innovate completely new things. And sometimes there were lawsuits flying around about who stole which IP, yet the same workers continued to be hired by tech companies, and people didn't automatically assume that anyone who hired them subsequently was participating in IP theft.

I guarantee you that former Uber self-driving engineers are still gainfully employed, many in the field of self-driving cars, and no one is accusing their new employers of trying to steal IP from Google.

How do you justify applying this double standard?

I never said they can't be hired in this field. What a straw man. We can't use unlicensed technology at our companies. Period. It's not an anti-china thing (nice ad-hominem btw), it's a pro-innovation thing. Maybe you have a romantic vision of Silicon Valley from the 70s when the value was not fully recognized but in real life, attorneys make their living proving this notion wrong. Lot's of people think like you until they get a lawsuit for breach of contract or unjust enrichment. Why should one person or company get to profit individually from other peoples work who did not authorize them? That's fucking gross and here you are basically advocating for it.

Is it not obvious what the line is here? Don't give IP that isn't yours to companies that hire you. It doesn't matter if its from your memory or files that you copied and physically moved with you. This individual did not follow this obvious rule. If you can't do your job without stealing IP, then your job is criminal.

Original post claimed:

> However there is no evidence that the Chinese company stole any IP from ASML

You referenced the chinese company hiring the person with the sentence

> In the except above, you've described the means by which the company stole the IP and is using the IP illegally. How can you possibly believe that the company didn't steal IP after writing this?

This seems to me that you propose the person being hired by a company is proof enough of the chinese company actually using this technology.

(The company accused and fined for IP violation was an american company employing the person in question.)

I think the relevant difference here may be how there is a bit of a cold war with China.

If the company settled, that guy took much more than just what was in his head.

To play devil's advocate, if you were working at company X and competitor Y hires you, is it realistic to not use any of the knowledge that you learned or worked on at company X at company Y? As a software engineer, I definitely use best practices I've learned from previous companies.

That is different than cloning licensed technology. No one can take your memory away but how you use it is critical. And yes you can absolutely still steal IP this way and get sued to oblivion by the owner.

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