National Business Wire (Dec 25) -- U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. announced it has reached a global settlement agreement with Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. Ltd., Bloomberg reported Sunday.

The report quoted a Micron spokesperson as saying on Sunday that the two companies will each globally drop their lawsuits against the other.

Micron, the world's third-largest memory chip maker, sued Fujian Jinhua, a China-based semiconductor company, and its Taiwanese partner United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) in 2017 for stealing memory chip trade secrets.

The U.S. Department of Commerce also announced that, as of 30 October 2018, it would add Fujian Jinhua to its "Entity List, restricting the export of U.S. products and technologies to the Chinese firm.

Following the U.S. blacklisting, UMC announced that it would suspend its R&D collaboration with Fujian Jinhua until the relevant authorities approved the resumption of the partnership.

In early November 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had filed charges against Fujian Jinhua and UMC for allegedly conspiring to steal Micron's intellectual property.

And in late October 2020, DOJ announced that UMC pleaded guilty to theft of trade secrets and would pay a $60 million fine, and promised to cooperate with the investigation of Fujian Jinhua.

Micron announced in late November 2021 that it had reached a global settlement agreement with UMC, while the latter paid Micron a one-time payment of an undisclosed amount.

The settlement between Micron and Fujian Jinhua, marked the final end of a six-year-long intellectual property theft lawsuit.

However, some industry insiders said that this is only a settlement between the two companies, and does not mean a settlement between DOJ and Fujian Jinhua.