A former employee who stole SK hynix(000660) trade secrets to move to a Chinese company was sentenced to prison again on appeal.
According to legal sources on the 9th, the Seoul High Court Criminal Division 10-1 (High Court Judges Lee Sang-ho, Lee Jae-shin and Lee Hye-ran) recently sentenced a person surnamed Kim, who was indicted on charges of violating the Act on the Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology, violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and breach of trust in the course of duty, to one year and six months in prison, the same as the first trial.
Kim, while working at SK hynix's Chinese subsidiary in 2022, is accused of unlawfully leaking and improperly using or disclosing advanced technology and trade secrets related to CIS (CMOS image sensor, a semiconductor device that converts light into digital signals).
Kim is known to have committed the offenses after receiving job offers from HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei, China's largest telecommunications equipment corporations, among others.
To use for resume preparation, Kim printed trade secret materials from the in-house document management system and took photos. Some confidential materials were in fact quoted in the resume, and the contents were disclosed to a Chinese company.
In the first trial, Kim was found guilty of leaking trade secrets and was sentenced to prison.
However, the charge of leaking materials related to hybrid bonding technology necessary for implementing HBM (high bandwidth memory) was found not guilty, on the grounds that the technology cannot be regarded as advanced technology as defined by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources.
The appellate court found no illegality in the first-instance judgment, such as misapprehension of facts or misinterpretation of law. However, it considered as favorable sentencing factors that Kim admitted all the offenses and that most of the leaked trade secrets were recovered.