By: Aaron Kim, ITMG Insider Threat Analyst
A former Broadcom engineer who pleaded guilty to stealing his ex-employer’s trade secrets has asked the court not to give him prison time, saying he stole the files for reference, fearing he would “be unable to keep up” with “more technical and younger engineers” at a new startup. Peter Kisang Kim, who worked for Broadcom as a principal design engineer for more than 20 years, quit his job in July 2020 and, after less than two weeks, took a job at a startup based in the People’s Republic of China. In pleading guilty, Kim admitted to accessing trade secret information from Broadcom related to the testing and design of the company’s Trident family of chipsets, which are designed for use in network switches and cloud-based networking equipment.
According to the lawsuit, Kim copied more than 500 Broadcom files from its document repository system. In pleading to trade secret theft, he admitted to possessing Broadcom trade secrets related to the Trident family of chips, including those contained in test plans, design verification environment files, and design specifications. He admitted that he knowingly possessed the Broadcom trade secrets knowing that he took them from Broadcom. He also acknowledged that Broadcom took reasonable measures to keep the Broadcom trade secrets secret, including by storing the trade secrets on non-public document repositories in which the access permissions were restricted, requiring appropriate nondisclosure agreements to be executed before the trade secrets could be shared outside Broadcom, and in view of the confidentiality agreements Kim signed with Broadcom and the annual trainings he received, among other things.
During Kim’s employment at his new company, Kim repeatedly accessed and referenced the Broadcom trade secrets on his personal electronic devices as well as the laptop issued by his new employer, as he admitted in his plea agreement. Additionally, Kim reviewed the Broadcom trade secrets on his company-issued laptop while also working on verification, test plan, and architecture documents for his new employer.
On November 4, 2021, a federal grand jury indicted Kim charging him with eighteen counts of trade secret theft associated with Broadcom. Pursuant to his plea agreement, Kim pleaded guilty to three counts. In accordance with the terms of his plea agreement, the remaining counts were dismissed today in connection with his sentencing.
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