Former employees of SEMES, a Samsung Electronics subsidiary supplier of key chip-related equipment, will stand trial on charges they were involved in technology theft.

According to the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office on Wednesday, seven people were indicted for violating the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act.

They are charged with making wafer-cleaning machines using technology taken from SEMES to sell to Chinese entities, pocketing around 71 billion won.

The machines are considered key to Samsung's cutting-edge semiconductor chip technology, as it is crucial to keep chip wafers clean at the earliest stage of the chip-making process.

SEMES is known to be the world's first company to develop such technology with their machines supplied exclusively to Samsung Electronics. Samsung has a stake of more than 90 percent in the firm.