The Supreme Court building in Seocho District, southern Seoul [NEWS1]
The Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings that had acquitted a former Samsung Engineering, now Samsung E&A, employee of charges related to leaking semiconductor ultrapure water system technology ahead of a job transfer to a Chinese company.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to overturn part of the appellate court’s decision, sentencing
the defendant to three years in prison on charges including violations of the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology, the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act and breach of trust. The case was sent back to the Seoul Central District Court for further review of the acquittal on the industrial technology leak charges.
While working at Samsung Engineering, the former employee was responsible for construction management and client coordination for the ultrapure water system at the V1 semiconductor production line at Samsung Electronics’ Hwaseong plant in Gyeonggi.
In 2019, the former employee resigned after receiving a job offer from Jin Semiconductor, a Chinese semiconductor consulting company, through a former Samsung SDI employee.
Investigators said the defendant leaked company materials by sending design template files to a personal email account for use after changing jobs. The files reportedly included detailed information on Samsung Engineering’s eco-friendly, non-chemical ultrapure water production facilities and equipment, along with optimized design values automatically calculated by the templates.
Prosecutors charged the defendant with taking a laptop containing three leaked design files to China in March 2019.
Ultrapure water refers to water purified to near-perfect levels by removing impurities such as ions and microorganisms down to as little as one part per ten trillion. It is used in semiconductor manufacturing processes to clean contaminants and particles.
Samsung Electronics building in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on May 10 [NEWS1]
Prosecutors argued that the leaked materials constituted legally protected industrial technology and that the defendant should be punished accordingly. However, the first trial court acquitted the former employee on those charges and the appellate court upheld the ruling.
The former Samsung SDI employee, who introduced the defendant to the Chinese company, was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for three years on charges including overseas leakage of trade secrets under the unfair competition prevention law. The person did not appeal and the sentence became final.
The appellate court had ruled that semiconductor ultrapure water technology did not fall within the scope of advanced technologies and products listed by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources at the time. The court reasoned that the freshwater category in the ministry’s notification referred specifically to seawater desalination technology, whereas semiconductor ultrapure water technology involved industrial water treatment.
As is permitted in the Korean judicial system, the prosecution appealed the case, sending it to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, however, disagreed, ruling that the lower court had misinterpreted the law in acquitting the defendant of violating the industrial technology protection act.
“The meaning of ‘freshwater’ in the relevant classification includes not only cases in which treated water is used as freshwater, but also cases in which the source water itself is freshwater,” the Supreme Court said.
The ruling stated that prosecutors’ argument that ultrapure water processing technology fell under high-efficiency reverse osmosis system optimization technology could therefore support charges of industrial technology leakage.
“Whether certain information qualifies as industrial technology protected under the Industrial Development Act should be determined by comprehensively considering factors such as whether the information enables the relevant institution to create added value for industrial development and enhance industrial competitiveness,” the Supreme Court said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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