The Taiwan Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, in its initial ruling, handed down prison sentences of varying lengths to four former engineers of TSMC: Chen Liming, Wu Bingjun, Ge Yiping, and Chen Weijie. Their crimes involved the theft and disclosure of confidential information, notably encompassing TSMC's cutting-edge 2-nanometer technology. Chen Liming and Chen Weijie saw their appeals rejected by Taiwan's Supreme Court, paving the way for their sentences to be carried out. Meanwhile, Wu Bingjun and Ge Yiping opted not to appeal, and neither did the prosecution, thus their sentences are now legally binding. According to reports, following his departure from TSMC, Chen Liming joined the marketing team of a supplier, Taiwan Tokyo Electron. In a bid to secure business deals, he leveraged his previous professional ties to persuade the other three individuals to illicitly copy confidential documents from TSMC. The quartet accomplished this theft by utilizing the official laptops belonging to engineers who remained employed at TSMC.