Toshiba sues rival for nicking flash memory secrets

South Korean chip maker SK Hynix allegedly stole proprietary data about the Japanese firm’s NAND technology.

"Moving forward, Toshiba will construct a more robust system for protecting its intellectual property and preventing its loss," Toshiba officials said in a statement.

On March 13, a former SK Hynix employee was arrested for allegedly accessing and copying Toshiba's trade secrets.  The compromise occurred when he was working inside Toshiba's Yokkaichi plant in central Japan. He then handed the data to SK Hynix in July 2008.

“Japan has long suffered from leakage of its technologies as other Asian companies aggressively recruit Japanese talent and engineers with high pay, while critics have said Japanese companies haven't taken sufficient precautions to protect their trade secrets,” Reuters reports.  

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.