Seven people, including former CEOs and vice presidents, including partner corporations, were tried without detention
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Cho Hyun-young = Employees of partner companies who attempted to steal important technologies from Samsung Display and Samsung SDS in order to use them for their own Chinese business were brought to trial.
On the 11th, the Seoul Eastern District Public Prosecution Office's Serious Crime Prosecution Division 1 (Chief Prosecutor Lee Han-ul) announced that it had indicted without detention four employees, including the managing director of Company A, for illegally obtaining data containing Samsung Display's 8th generation LCD panel process technology, a national core technology.
Three people, including the former CEO of Company A, who used and leaked Samsung SDS' factory automation program source code without permission, were also indicted along with Company A.
Company A is a corporation that develops and builds factory automation solutions used by display and semiconductor manufacturers and engages in maintenance business. It has been in charge of on-site inspection of facilities subject to sale at Samsung Display's Asan production facility in South Chungcheong Province.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Company A's employees compressed the log files of the company's production facilities three times during the due diligence process for the purpose of using them to build a factory automation system for Chinese companies and hid them in locations excluded from information deletion measures.
The log file included process conditions such as temperature, pressure, and gas flow rate.
This information is a national core technology and trade secret regarding the 8th generation LCD panel manufacturing and process.
The Public Prosecution Office explained that they later tried to take the files out (allegedly violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act), but the attempt was limited as they were discovered during additional inspections between September and December 2020.
Other employees of Company A were indicted on charges of unauthorized use of factory automation program source code from Samsung SDS (violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and Copyright Act).
According to the Public Prosecution Service, Company A handed over related assets, including copyright rights to the factory automation program, to Samsung SDS for 7.4 billion won in 2011.
Afterwards, Company A continued to use the program in accordance with the resale agreement and continued to use the source code without permission even after the contract was terminated in May 2019.
In June 2019, the former CEO and vice president of Company A developed a product for a Chinese company's own operation based on this source code and delivered the source code containing trade secrets to the Chinese company.
Since then, until March 31 of this year, they have carried out factory automation construction projects 33 times for foreign companies and 10 times for domestic companies, using source code without permission and infringing on copyright rights.
The overseas business size is worth 32.1 billion won, and the domestic business size is worth 4.8 billion won.
In addition, the company copied Samsung SDS's programs without permission while conducting a total of 33 projects worth approximately 15.7 billion won for domestic and foreign companies.
The Public Prosecutors' Office said, "If competing companies use manufacturing and operation information remaining on PCs, there is a risk that the competitiveness of the company that developed the technology will decline. As a cybercrime agency, we will respond strictly to crimes of leaking national core technologies and trade secrets using digital tools, etc."
