DuPont Trade Secrets Verdict: Guilty

A federal jury in San Francisco has convicted Walter Lian-Heen Liew and former DuPont engineer Robert Maegerle of stealing trade secrets related to DuPont’s titanium dioxide production process. During the trial, federal prosecutors made the case that Liew recruited Maegerle as part of an effort to gain the information for the Chinese government. Maegerle, who retired in 1991 after 35 years with DuPont, passed along what he knew about the process as well as information about DuPont’s TiO₂ plant in Taiwan. Liew sold the information to a firm controlled by the Chinese government for more than $20 million. Sentencing hearings will begin on June 10.