Are trade secrets leaked when accessing the company server and downloading files?... The reason why the employee raised his hand saying, “There is no fact of a leak.”

The court said, “It was accessed to revoke permissions… The transferred data is not trade secret data.”

A consulting company filed a request for a preliminary injunction against an employee suspected of leaking trade secrets, but the court did not accept it.

Last February, the 60th Civil Affairs Division of the Seoul Central District Court dismissed an application for a provisional injunction, including a ban on trade secret infringement, filed by consulting company A against employee B.

Mr. B, who worked in the human resources department, received notice from Company A in September last year that he would be suspended and that his access to the company's servers and emails would be restricted.

However, Company A filed a preliminary injunction, claiming that even after Mr. B was suspended, he accessed the company's server, downloaded a large amount of trade secret information, and transferred some of it to an external hard drive.

Mr. B denied the download itself. It is said that he accessed the server to revoke his server privileges. He also emphasized that the files moved to the external hard drive were only evidence for disciplinary action and were not trade secret information.

The court ruled in Mr. B’s favor. The court said, “When the server is synchronized, the file date value changes. Looking at the changed date value, there is a possibility that the debtor was connected to the server at the time,” but added, “Even if you simply connect, it is automatically synchronized.”

He added, “This supports the debtor’s claim that he only accessed the site to remove permission,” and added, “As the data transferred to the storage device is also not incident-related, it cannot be considered that trade secret information was leaked based on this.”

Attorney Ji Min-hee of Daeryun Law Firm, who represented Mr. B, explained, “Infringement of trade secrets is recognized only when there is an act of using or disclosing trade secret data for the purpose of gaining unfair advantage or causing damage.” He added, “In this case, Mr. B did not intend to infringe, nor did he use or disclose, so he was able to explain this well and resolve the injustice.”

Reporter Kim Jong-cheol (jckim99@sportsseoul.com)

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Trade secrets leaked when accessing company server and downloading files?... Law: “There is no fact of a leak.” Reason for raising employee’s hand (link)