A former Director General at Samsung Electronics, who was put on trial on charges of passing core semiconductor process technology to a Chinese competitor, received a heavier sentence in the remand trial than in the appellate court.
The Criminal Division 10-1 of the Seoul High Court (Presiding Judge Lee Sang-ho, high court judge) on the 23rd sentenced a former Director General at Samsung Electronics, a person surnamed Kim, indicted on charges including violating the Act on the Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology, to six years and four months in prison and a fine of 200 million won. A former employee, a person surnamed Bang, at semiconductor equipment company A, who was tried alongside, was sentenced to three months in prison, and another person surnamed Kim was sentenced to two months in prison, suspended for one year.
The court said of Kim, "Former Director General Kim illicitly obtained Samsung Electronics' trade secrets and used them in China, making the nature of the crime very serious." It added, "Infringement of national core technology can render the massive time and expense invested in DRAM sales and development futile and harm national competitiveness." However, it maintained an acquittal on part of the industrial technology leakage charges.
The case began with suspicions that information related to Samsung Electronics' 18-nanometer DRAM process and equipment design technical data from a partner company were passed to Chinese DRAM firm CXMT. Prosecutors believed that in 2016, as Kim and others moved to or cooperated with CXMT, they obtained Samsung Electronics' national core technology and trade secrets and, based on that, took part in formulating the Chinese side's DRAM development plans and in equipment development. CXMT is a local DRAM company established with funds from a Chinese local government, and prosecutors have suspected that they agreed to receive or accepted compensation and incentives worth tens of billions of won in return for the technology leak.
The first-instance court found that Kim played a leading role in leaking core semiconductor technology and sentenced Kim to seven years in prison and a fine of 200 million won. Prison terms were also handed down to accomplices, a person surnamed Bang and another person surnamed Kim. However, some of the charges related to whether the key equipment technology was actually siphoned and used were found not guilty on grounds that drawings or materials were not sufficiently verified.
The appellate court largely maintained the structure of the guilty findings of the first-instance court but reduced Kim's sentence to six years in prison. The appellate bench was said to have partially reduced the sentence by reflecting the extent to which Kim directly participated in the overall leakage of Samsung Electronics' core technology. In contrast, most findings regarding the accomplices were maintained.
However, in Feb., the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Seoul High Court, finding that part of the not-guilty rulings could not stand as is. Regarding the accomplices' acts of uploading technical data to a NAS server and exchanging it among themselves, the lower court had not sufficiently separated and examined the structures of "disclosure," "use," and "acquisition" of trade secrets under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act. The Supreme Court found that the act of transmitting materials among accomplices could also be assessed as a separate trade secret infringement, and judged that the lower court's not-guilty ruling reflected a misunderstanding of the legal principles.
Reflecting the Supreme Court's view, the remand trial recognized additional guilty findings for some accomplices and increased Kim's sentence beyond the appellate court's. However, portions of the industrial technology leakage charges that had remained not guilty in the lower court were again maintained as not guilty.