Bitmain Technologies Limited filed a trade secret infringement lawsuit to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court against its former employee Zuoxing YANG and the company he founded. The object' s amount of the lawsuit was 99 million yuan. The Beijing Intellectual Property Court has officially accepted the case.

Defendant Zuoxing YANG was an employee of Bitmain Company and fully participated in the research and development of a new generation of chips at that time. After finishing the chip research and development, Yang left his post. Before leaving his post, Yang had already founded Shenzhen Bitmicro Technology Co., Ltd. and completed the chip design and formal film streaming in less than 5 months after its establishment. In such a short period of time, Bitmicro completed a series of complicated processes, from the establishment of the company, chip design, film streaming, to mass production of mining machines, which obviously did not conform to the normal product research and development cycle, and the products produced by Bitmicro at that time were very similar to those of Bitmain.

In recent years, the protection of trade secrets has drawn more and more attention in China. In September 2020, the Supreme People's Court issued the Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in the Trial of Civil Cases of Infringement of Trade Secrets. On February 26, 2021, the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court ruled the highest compensation amount in history (The amount involved is 159 million yuan) against the infringement of trade secrets.