1. Summary of the Indictment
The defendants joined the victim company and worked as team leader and manager in the System Development Team of the Technology Research Institute, responsible for designing automated equipment for smartphone camera modules. They later resigned from the victim company. Subsequently, the defendants joined Company A, where they worked as deputy directors in the System Design department of the Technology Research Institute, handling the design of automated equipment for camera modules.
The victim company was established for the purpose of manufacturing and selling semiconductor equipment, with 60 employees and annual sales of approximately 16 billion won.
The victim company's 'Camera Module Automated Assembly Equipment' manufacturing technology was developed in 2016 after investing about 3.8 billion won in research and development. The company supplies 'Camera Module Automated Assembly Equipment' to LG Innotek, Samsung Electronics, and others, while also exporting overseas.
As such, the victim company's mobile phone camera module automation equipment manufacturing technology is the result of years of research and development with significant investment in personnel and funds. If competitors were to obtain the design drawings and program source files, it would constitute valuable material that could provide competitive advantages without investing time, effort, and expenses.
To this end, the victim company stored and managed source codes and design drawings on its own server inaccessible from outside, limiting access based on department, job duties, and position. They used a separate SVN server for the development team to store modification and change histories of text files and other development sources for control program source files, separate from the design team server. When employees joined the company, they were required to sign a confidentiality pledge stating, "I will always be mindful of the company's security during my employment period and will not disclose any secrets or other confidential matters of the company obtained in the course of my duties to anyone other than those concerned." The pledge also included clauses about not disclosing or using trade secrets developed or acquired during employment, returning all materials containing trade secrets upon resignation, and not working for or managing competing domestic or foreign companies without the company's consent after leaving.
Defendant X, at Company A's office, opened the victim company's trade secret side-fill equipment assembly drawing step file using SolidWorks program to create a product proposal for VCM rent equipment manufacturing. He then saved the layout arrangement, creating 206 files as listed in the attached crime list 2, and delivered them to Defendant Y, a design team member, via USB.
Thus, Defendant X used and disclosed the victim company's trade secrets with the purpose of gaining improper benefits or causing damage to the trade secret holder, and Defendant Y acquired them for the same purpose.
Additionally, Defendant X, at Company A's office, opened the victim company's trade secret glass attach equipment assembly drawing 000 file using SolidWorks program to create a product proposal for IR attach equipment manufacturing. He created attach ATT and disc files, compressed them, and delivered them to Y via USB. He then had Y design IR attach equipment production drawings using the same measurements and shapes from the victim company's 000 file, creating 41 files as listed in the attached crime list 4.
By doing so, the defendant used and disclosed the victim company's trade secrets with the purpose of gaining improper benefits or causing damage to the victim company.
K&P Law Firm's Argument
To qualify as a 'trade secret', the information must be (1) not publicly known (non-disclosure), (2) have independent economic value, and (3) be maintained as a secret through reasonable efforts (secrecy management) in production methods, sales methods, or other technical or managerial information useful for business activities.
The files in question do not meet the secrecy management requirements of trade secrets for the following reasons:
1) At the time of the defendants' resignation, the victim company's design materials were stored on shared PCs (or servers), but there were no measures such as number locks, fingerprint recognition, or CCTV to restrict or monitor access to only authorized personnel. Neither the shared PCs (or servers) themselves nor the stored folders or files were password-protected, and there was no system to control the use of personal USBs. As a result, any employee could freely download data from the shared PCs (or servers) using personal USBs, and it appears that the files in question were also freely accessible and usable by anyone in the same way. There was no designated security manager, nor was anyone specifically assigned to manage the security of these files.
Consequently, it is difficult to consider that these files were managed as secrets from physical, human, and organizational perspectives.
2) At the time of the defendants' resignation, the victim company had no security regulations. There is no evidence to suggest that these files were designated as trade secrets or marked as confidential, nor is there evidence of information security training being conducted. Therefore, it is also difficult to consider that the fact that these files were being managed as trade secrets was maintained in a recognizable state.
3) The victim company had annual sales of about 16 billion won, exports of about 8.5 billion won, 60 employees, and spent about 3.8 billion won on development. Despite this, there is no objective evidence to support that additional measures were taken to maintain and manage these files as secrets beyond the facts already acknowledged.
4) Although the victim company claims to have established a DLP system to prevent the leakage of technical data, there is no evidence that such a system was in place at the time of the defendants' resignation.
Court's Decision
The court accepted K&P Law Firm's argument and found the defendants not guilty.
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