[Edaily Reporter BAEK JU-A ] A former employee charged with stealing trade secrets from SK hynix(000660)to join a Chinese company was sentenced to prison in the appellate court as well.

According to legal circles on the 9th, the Seoul High Court’s Criminal Division 10-1 (Presiding Judges Lee Sang-ho, Lee Jae-shin, and Lee Hye-ran) recently sentenced Mr. Kim, who had been indicted on charges of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, and breach of trust in the course of business, to one year and six months in prison—the same sentence as in the first trial.

Mr. Kim, who worked at SK hynix’s Chinese subsidiary, is accused of unauthorizedly leaking, and subsequently misusing and disclosing, the company’s cutting-edge technology and trade secrets related to CIS (CMOS Image Sensor—a semiconductor device that converts light into digital signals) in 2022.

Investigations revealed that he committed the offenses after receiving job offers from companies such as HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei, China’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer.

It was revealed that Kim violated security regulations by printing or photographing trade secret materials from the company’s internal document management system to use in his resume.

He actually cited portions of some of the confidential materials in his resume, thereby disclosing them to the Chinese company.

The trial court found Mr. Kim guilty of leaking trade secrets and sentenced him to prison.

However, he was found not guilty of leaking materials related to hybrid bonding—a technology necessary for implementing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI).

This was based on the reasoning that the hybrid bonding technology contained in the materials leaked by Mr. Kim could not be considered an “advanced technology” as defined in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s “Scope of Advanced Technologies and Products” notice.

The appellate court found no legal errors, such as misapprehension of facts or misunderstanding of legal principles, in the first-instance court’s ruling.

Regarding sentencing, the court rebuked the defendant, stating, “The defendant leaked a large volume of trade secrets and disclosed them by sending a resume prepared using that information to a Chinese company, making the nature of the crime serious.”

The court further criticized, “These trade secrets are the result of the victim company’s investment of significant resources over many years; if such infringement crimes are punished leniently, companies will lose the motivation to devote themselves to technological development, and it will result in overseas competitors easily appropriating the technological capabilities that domestic companies have built up through arduous efforts under the pretext of recruiting talent.”

However, the court considered it a mitigating factor in sentencing that Mr. Kim fully admitted to the crime and that most of the leaked trade secrets had been recovered.