When Micron sued UMC and Jinhua for violating its patents, they countersued in China’s Fujian Province. A Fujian court ruled that Micron was responsible for violating UMC and Jinhua’s patents—patents that had been filed using material stolen from Micron. To “remedy” the situation, Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court banned Micron from selling twenty-six products in China, the company’s biggest market. This was a perfect case study of the state-backed intellectual property theft foreign companies operating in China had long complained of.
