Employees from a partner company have been charged for attempting to steal core technology from Samsung Display. Former executives of the company have also been indicted for unauthorized use of Samsung SDS's factory automation program source code.
The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office's Major Crimes Division announced on November 11 that four employees, including an executive from Company A, were indicted without detention for unlawfully obtaining materials related to the 8th generation LCD panel manufacturing process, which is considered a national core technology. Three former executives of Company A and the company itself were also charged for unauthorized use and disclosure of Samsung SDS's factory automation program source code.
Company A develops, builds, and maintains factory automation solutions for display and semiconductor manufacturers. It was responsible for conducting on-site inspections of equipment slated for sale at Samsung Display's production facility in Asan, South Chungcheong Province.
According to the prosecutors, employees of Company A concealed log files from the company's production equipment during the inspection process, compressing them and hiding them in locations that would not be subject to information deletion, intending to use them for building a factory automation system for a Chinese company.
The log files contained critical process conditions such as temperature, pressure, and gas flow, which are classified as national core technology and trade secrets related to the manufacturing of 8th generation LCD panels.
They attempted to export the files but were caught during an additional inspection, resulting in an incomplete attempt to violate the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
Other employees of Company A were charged for unauthorized use of the factory automation program source code from Samsung SDS, violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and copyright law.
In 2011, Company A transferred the copyright and related assets of the factory automation program to Samsung SDS for 7.4 billion won. After continuing to use the program under a resale contract, they were found to have unlawfully used the source code after the contract was terminated in May 2019.
The former representative and vice president of Company A developed products for a Chinese company based on Samsung SDS's source code in June 2019, transferring source code containing trade secrets. They conducted approximately 33 factory automation projects worth about 32.1 billion won for overseas companies while unlawfully using the source code until March of this year. They also executed 10 projects worth 4.8 billion won for domestic companies.
Additionally, they unlawfully replicated Samsung SDS's program in a total of 33 instances, conducting projects valued at approximately 15.7 billion won.
The prosecutors stated, "If competing companies utilize manufacturing and operational information left on PCs, it could undermine the competitiveness of the companies that developed the technology. As a cybercrime-focused office, we will respond strictly to crimes involving the leakage of national core technology and trade secrets using digital tools."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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