Ismedia Camera Inspection Equipment Data Diverted
Used by Chinese Company
Supreme Court Overturns Lower Courts' "No Guilt for Sharing Among Accomplices" Ruling
The Supreme Court has ruled that if accomplices exchange trade secrets among themselves during the process of stealing a company's core technology and passing it on to a foreign company, this should not be considered merely as preparation for the crime. Instead, it should be punished as separate crimes of "disclosure" and "acquisition."
According to the legal community on March 1, the Supreme Court (Presiding Justice Oh Seokjun) overturned the appellate court's acquittal of the six defendants, including a man surnamed Kim, on charges of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and remanded the case to the lower court for further proceedings.
Kim and the others were accused of illegally taking out source codes, circuit diagrams, and parts lists related to camera module inspection equipment (grabber)-all considered trade secrets of the victim company, "Ismedia"-around 2022. The investigation found that, in order to develop equipment for Apple supply at the Chinese company "Jiangsu Lead," they exchanged technical data among themselves via KakaoTalk group chats, email, and USB drives, and then passed this information on to foreign associates.
The key question in the trial was whether the act of exchanging such materials among defendants who had conspired to jointly use the trade secrets constituted independent crimes of "disclosure" or "acquisition."
Both the first and second trial courts held that their actions did not amount to disclosure or acquisition of trade secrets, and thus found them not guilty on that part. The courts ruled that since the defendants had conspired to jointly use the trade secrets as co-principal offenders, merely passing materials among themselves did not constitute a separate crime. As a result, only one defendant, surnamed Lee, was sentenced to two years in prison at the appellate court, while the remaining defendants received suspended sentences of one to two years in prison, with probation periods of two to three years.
However, the Supreme Court overturned this decision. The bench pointed out, "Under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, the acts of acquiring, disclosing, and using trade secrets are each independent types of crime," and emphasized, "Even among co-principal offenders, informing or handing over a trade secret to an accomplice who was not previously aware of it constitutes disclosure of a trade secret, and the person receiving it is guilty of acquisition."
The court further stated that "the appellate court erred in legal reasoning by ruling that the transmission of trade secrets among the defendants could not be considered disclosure or acquisition merely because they had agreed to jointly use the trade secrets," and provided this as grounds for overturning the decision and remanding the case.
Previously, last month, the Supreme Court also overturned and remanded the appellate ruling in the Samsung Electronics and Eugene Technology semiconductor technology leak case, using the same legal reasoning.
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