The government is considering a plan to make industrial technology leakers pay damages exceeding research and development (R&D) expense, according to reports on the 1st. Currently, the statute governing damages for industrial technology leaks does not specify a basis for calculating the amount of compensation. As a result, criticism has grown that court-awarded damages, set at the court's discretion, are absurdly small compared with the corporations' losses, prompting the government to prepare countermeasures.
According to ChosunBiz's reporting, the Office for Government Policy Coordination recently received a "normalization of abnormalities" task from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources with this content. Industrial technology—such as semiconductors, batteries, and displays—is directly tied to national competitiveness, and leaks abroad can significantly affect economic security, so it is protected by the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology.
However, even if victim corporations file civil suits against those who siphoned off the technology and the corporations that used it, they cannot receive sufficient compensation. The law states that when willful infringement is recognized, the damages shall be set "within five times the recognized amount of loss," but the legal basis for calculating the "recognized amount of loss" itself is not specified. In response, the government seeks to amend the law so that at minimum, the expense of R&D for the leaked technology is recognized as the amount of loss.
Cases in which damages are properly calculated in technology leak incidents are extremely rare. According to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's "Study on Sentencing Standards for Technology Leakage Crimes," of 496 first-instance guilty verdicts related to technology leaks handed down from 2015 to 2023, only 23 cases (4.6%) listed the amount of damage in the judgment. Even those were cases with direct losses, such as equipment theft. Meanwhile, the number of detected cases of overseas leaks of industrial technology has shown an upward trend, from 17 in 2020 to 23 in 2024.
Some argue, however, that a comprehensive standard is needed that goes beyond R&D expense to encompass losses from technology leaks such as operating losses and declines in market share.
Kang Wook, a professor in the Department of Public Administration at the Korean National Police University, said in "A Study on Standards for Calculating Damage Amounts from Industrial Technology Leaks," "The United States specifies detailed standards for calculating damages—such as actual losses, unjust enrichment, and reasonable royalties—through the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) and the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), and includes in the damages the development costs the infringer avoided by misappropriating the technology." He added, "It is necessary to develop a multidimensional, standardized evaluation model with the United States as a reference."
An official at the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI) said, "We are currently in the stage of continuing working-level consultations on the task with the OPC and the Ministry of Intellectual Property, and the policy has not been finalized."