Broadcom Accuses 7 of Taking Secrets

Chip maker Broadcom Corp. is charging that seven current and former employees stole its cellphone chip designs to use for a newly formed company.

The Irvine-based company, in a suit filed this month in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, alleges “a well-orchestrated, international scheme to steal from Broadcom trade secrets ... worth millions of dollars.”

The company’s complaint described intercepted e-mails in which former Broadcom employees allegedly solicited a person working at the company to copy chip designs for the new company.

Broadcom claims that the leader of the breakaway group is Leo Li, who was a senior director of Broadcom’s Mobile Communications Division until Oct. 5.

Li and the other defendants came to Broadcom in 2002 as part of its $258-million acquisition of Mobilink Telecom Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., company that supplied mobile phone chips. The acquisition was Broadcom’s entry into the cellular chip-design market.

The complaint says Li created MagiComm Technology Inc. while he was working at Broadcom. The company hired at least three former Broadcom employees and was attempting to take business from Broadcom using Broadcom’s chip designs, the complaint says.

Brad Blocker, an attorney for Li, said the claims were “fallacious and inflammatory.”

Blocker said MagiComm didn’t want to compete against Broadcom. Instead, MagiComm wants to expand the market for Broadcom’s chips by designing new cellphones, Blocker said.