Employees who downloaded large amounts of company confidential information and transferred to competitors... Prosecutors ‘not indict’

The suspect countered, “I downloaded it as a work order and destroyed it all.”
Prosecutor: “It is difficult to admit the suspect based on the fact that he downloaded and changed jobs, and there is insufficient evidence.”

There have been cases where employees who were accused of downloading a large amount of confidential data from their previous workplace and passing it on to a competitor and were sent to the prosecution were not indicted.

It was confirmed that the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office decided not to indict two people, including employee A, on charges of violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act (leakage of trade secrets abroad, etc.) and breach of duty due to insufficient evidence on January 23.

They were accused of downloading more than 20,000 trade secret files from the company they were working for in 2022, and later transferred to an overseas competitor and used the files, and were sent to the prosecution.

The plaintiff's company claimed that after they expressed their intention to retire, they received data on their personal USB drives without justifiable reason and that the information was stolen externally.

However, suspect A and others completely denied the charges. He countered by saying, “I only downloaded the file to follow work instructions to review the data,” and claimed, “During this process, all USBs used for security reasons were discarded, so no data was leaked.”

In addition, he emphasized, “The resignation also occurred six months after the download,” and “At the time of receiving the data, there was absolutely no purpose for it to be used by a competitor.”

The prosecutors who investigated this case decided that the charges were not admissible. Regarding the reason for non-indictment, the prosecution said, "It is acknowledged that Mr. A and others downloaded technical data files to a personal storage device and worked in the same position at a competitor company after leaving the company, but it is difficult to admit the charges based on these facts alone." They also said, "The files were not found in the laptops and mobile phones of the confiscated suspects."

Attorney Hwang Se-jeong of Daeryun Law Firm, who represented suspect A and others in this case, explained, “For the charge of leaking trade secrets to be recognized, the data must be leaked with the knowledge that it will be used or used abroad,” adding, “The employees downloaded the data to perform their duties, and there was no evidence of the data being used by the company they moved to, so the charge does not stand.”

Reporter Son Dong-wook (twson@lawleader.co.kr)

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Employees who downloaded large amounts of company confidential information and transferred to competitors... Prosecutors ‘not indicted’ (link)