The Stanford researchers could have been unaware of the Taiwanese student's work. It would not be surprising given the volume of scientific work that gets published every year. Independent discoveries happen all the time.
I don't know any other way to respond to this than to flat out contradict you: it is easy to miss something, even in a specialized subject where you know the 15 other groups working on similar stuff. Things are hidden in M.Sc. theses, Ph.D. theses and even papers with titles that didn't lead to you to suspect there was something relevant for your specific subject in them. There's just too much being published.
