Through production expansion projects, and headhunting Taiwanese competitors best talents, Chinese panel makers are putting leading Taiwanese display makers Innolux and AUO under immense pressure, reported Chinese-media TechNews.

A former AUO technology manager was convicted by the Hsinchu Court in northern Taiwan for selling sensitive OLED technology to CSOT. Tsung-Yi Hsu, a former OLED R&D department manager at AUO was charged of leaking AMOLED manufacturing and Thin-Film Transistor (TFT) structure research findings to his personal mailbox in May 2011. Hsu, who was OLED R&D department assistant manager in 2008, left the company in late February 2012 and was employed by Chinese competitor CSOT. At CSOT he became the director of the R&D center, and leaked AUO product manufacturing graphs and other materials to former AUO employees that jumped to CSOT.

Hsu claimed the files were forwarded to his personal mailbox, for working on the projects overtime from home. The graphs were mostly used for work at AOD to restore Samsung tablet assembly and related dissertations. However, his claims contradicted with court findings, which was commissioned to National Chiao Tung University to investigate. Hsu will be jailed six months and fined NT $180,000 (US $5,502.74) for leaking business secrets. Prosecutors are still deciding whether Hsu can pay a fine instead of facing imprisonment.

In November, AOD’s former R&D assistant manager Chung-ching Hsieh was jailed over the same reasons. After leaving AOD in February 2011 for CSOT, the former manager also leaked research results from an AOD commissioned project to NCCU to CSOT, and planned to publish the research results to apply for two patents in China. He was sentenced to two months of prison by local Hsinchu Courts.

Back in 2012, AOD also sued former employee Shui-chi Lian for downloading OLED display info from servers and leaking PSA technology to other clients.