A former employee put on trial on charges of leaking LG Energy Solution's trade secrets was sentenced to prison.
On the 22nd, according to legal sources, the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Agreement Division 32 (Presiding Judge Ryu Kyung-jin) sentenced former LG Energy Solution employee A to three years in prison on charges including violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
A is accused of illegally filming 16 trade secrets related to secondary batteries in 2021–2022 and leaking 24 trade secrets through a consulting brokerage firm via paid consulting. Among them were items confirmed to include national core technologies.
In addition, when the company banned for-profit consulting, A allegedly used another person's resident registration information to conduct consulting activities under a borrowed name.
A has argued, "All the materials filmed have no economic utility or were already public, and some were not even given security grades, so they cannot be considered trade secrets under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act."
The court found, "The materials the defendant filmed have independent economic value, are not publicly known, and are classified and managed by the company as confidential."
It added, "The defendant improperly obtained or leaked without authorization national core technologies or trade secrets that the victim company devised with considerable time and effort, and leaked trade secrets domestically and internationally for profit," and said, "Because the defendant also conducted paid consulting under a borrowed name to evade the company's monitoring and regulations, the culpability is by no means light."
However, the court considered as favorable sentencing factors that A worked diligently for 20 years and contributed to the company, and that the leaked trade secrets were not information that would significantly impair the company's technological competitiveness in the short term.
LG Energy Solution received a tip in Sep. 2022 related to A's offenses and conducted an internal investigation, and in Oct. of the same year it fired A.