An employee of a partner company who leaked the manufacturing method for a waterproof adhesive used in Samsung Electronics mobile phones and changed jobs was given a suspended prison sentence in a retrial after remand.
According to legal sources on the 16th, the Daejeon District Court on the 14th sentenced a person surnamed Jeong, who was brought to trial on charges including leaking trade secrets under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, to 10 months in prison, suspended for 3 years.
From Jan. 2015 to Jul. 2016, while working as a production department employee at a secondary subcontractor of Samsung Electronics, Jeong is accused of acquiring, using and leaking trade secrets by filming the manufacturing method for a waterproof adhesive with a mobile phone and making products using it after moving to another company.
Two officials at the company who hired Jeong as an experienced employee and told Jeong to try making a similar product were also indicted.
In the first trial, the court found all charges against Jeong and the company officials guilty and handed down suspended prison sentences. However, in the second trial, the court acquitted them, saying it was hard to see that Jeong recognized and acquired the manufacturing method as a trade secret, and that it was also hard to see that the other company officials used the technology for an improper purpose.
The second-trial decision was overturned again by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found that the manufacturing method they used was clearly a business secret, and that Jeong would have known that the method must not be used or leaked after leaving the company, even without an improper purpose. It also found there was strong room to conclude that the two other company officials who were indicted together recognized that the method could not be used without the victim company's permission.
Afterward, the court in the remand trial also found Jeong guilty, saying, "The manufacturing method was sufficiently treated as confidential, and it can be seen that there was an improper purpose even at the time the information was used." The two company officials were each sentenced to 6 months in prison, suspended for 3 years, and fined 5 million won.