The Supreme Court ruled that even if a former employee illegally took materials from their previous workplace, they cannot be punished if the content has been made public to unspecified individuals and does not affect the company's interests. It was determined that the materials do not qualify as the company’s "asset" critical to business operations, thus the charge of breach of trust in the workplace could not be applied.
According to the legal community on the 19th, the Supreme Court's first division (Chief Justice Shin Suk-hee) overturned the previous ruling that sentenced individual A to one year in prison for breach of trust in the workplace on charges filed on the 24th of last month and sent the case back to the Gwangju District Court.
Individual A worked at a domestic filler manufacturing company from 2014 to 2019. However, according to the prosecution, A unlawfully took test certificates regarding the "materials and supplies" used in a filler product, the results of animal testing on that filler product, and price quotations for the filler products while employed.
A is accused of producing filler materials using the information unlawfully taken from the previous company and filing a patent for the method of producing those filler materials.
The first and second trials found A guilty of breach of trust in the workplace and sentenced A to one year in prison. The second trial court stated that the materials A took were "the company’s critical asset for business operations." It further determined that A's act of not returning or disposing of each material involved in the case upon leaving the company constituted a breach of duty, and there was intent behind it. A appealed the second trial ruling.
However, the Supreme Court's ruling differed from the first and second trials. The Supreme Court referred to a precedent from 2022 related to the unlawful removal of company documents. At that time, the Supreme Court stated that for an employee's act of unlawfully taking materials to be classified as breach of trust, those materials must not be public to unspecified individuals and cannot be obtained without going through the holder (the company). Furthermore, the holder must have invested considerable time, effort, and "expense" in acquiring or developing those materials, and they must be classified as critical assets for business operations that could lead to a competitive advantage.
The Supreme Court found that the materials taken by A cannot be considered as "the company's critical asset for business operations." The reason given was that the materials A took were unrelated to the filler products manufactured at the previous workplace. The court also judged that the contents of the materials were information that could be normally obtained by unspecified individuals.