Gang That Leaked Core Semiconductor Technology to China... Supreme Court Orders Retrial, Saying "Leaking" and "Using" Must Be Punished Separately

Supreme Court Remands Semiconductor Technology Leakage Case
Overturns Lower Courts' Not-Guilty Rulings on Divulgence
"Exchanging Technology Among Accomplices Is Also a Crime"

The Supreme Court has ruled that a group who illicitly diverted core semiconductor technology to foreign companies should be punished severely not only for the charge of having 'used' the technology, but also for the separate crime of exchanging trade secrets among accomplices.

Supreme Court, Seocho-gu, Seoul. Yonhap News Agency

According to the legal community on the 22nd, the Supreme Court (Presiding Justice Lee Sukyeon) overturned the acquittal portions and the conviction portion of defendant A in the final appeal of three people, including A, who had been indicted on charges such as violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, and remanded the case to the appellate court.

A and his accomplices were charged with illicitly diverting trade secrets such as design and assembly drawings for parts related to semiconductor deposition equipment, which are core technologies of Eugene Technology, in 2022. They uploaded the diverted materials to a private domestic server and, despite knowing that they would be used abroad, including by a semiconductor company established in Shanghai, China, they handed over the drawings and actually used them to manufacture equipment. Due to this case, major domestic semiconductor companies such as Eugene Technology, Samsung Electronics, and Wonik IPS suffered damage.

The key issue was whether the act of exchanging trade secrets among accomplices who had conspired to commit the crime constitutes separate offenses of disclosure and acquisition in addition to the offense of using trade secrets.

The first and second instance courts found A and his accomplices guilty of the charge of 'using' trade secrets by exploiting the drawings to obtain unjust profits. However, regarding the charges of disclosing trade secrets overseas and making industrial technology public for the purpose of use abroad, they rendered a not-guilty verdict, holding that "once the crime of 'using' the technology has been established, the act of sharing the technology among accomplices for the purpose of committing the crime is not a separate offense but is absorbed into the offense of use." A, a former Samsung Electronics employee who was the principal offender, was sentenced in the first trial to seven years in prison and a fine of 200 million won, but this was slightly reduced in the second trial to six years in prison and a fine of 200 million won.

The Supreme Court, however, reached a different conclusion. The bench held that "when a person transfers a trade secret to a counterpart who does not yet know the trade secret, the transferor commits the offense of disclosure and the transferee commits the offense of acquisition, regardless of whether they conspired to use the trade secret together." The Court thus indicated that even among accomplices who conspired to use the trade secret, the acts of transferring and receiving the technology are not absorbed into the offense of use but constitute a concurrence of separate substantive crimes (multiple independent offenses).

The bench stated, "It also runs counter to the legislative purpose of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, which is to broadly punish all stages of trade secret infringement in order to protect companies' trade secrets," and held that "the lower court's judgment, which found the acquisition and disclosure portions not guilty, erred in its interpretation of the law."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.