There have been several instances of Samsung employees leaking the company's proprietary technologies and intellectual properties to Chinese firms. A few years ago, executives of Samsung's partner firm leaked curved OLED technology to Chinese firms, and one of those employees has now been convicted of the charges and sentenced to three years in prison.
Samsung's curved edge OLED panel technology was leaked to two Chinese firms in 2018
In 2018, a former CEO of TOPTEC Co. Ltd., leaked specifications, drawings, and inner workings of Samsung Display's curved edge OLED panel to Chinese firms. TOPTEC is a mid-sized South Korean firm that makes machines used to manufacture LCD and OLED panels. The company's ex-CEO and some employees obtained technical drawings of edge panel technology from Samsung and transferred them to a separate company they established. They then sold parts of the documents to two separate Chinese firms. Over six years, Samsung had to spend KRW 150 billion (around $117.7 million) and use 38 engineers for research to develop the curved edge panel technology.
The employees were also charged with manufacturing 24 units of 3D display lamination production equipment based on the technical drawings obtained from Samsung. They sold 16 of those units to Chinese firms and tried to sell the rest. A district court had earlier found those employees not guilty, concluding that the leaked technology was not a secret. However, an appellate court overturned the ruling and sentenced TOPTEC's ex-CEO to three years in prison.
The reason behind this ruling is that the technology in question is part of what the South Korean trade ministry classified as frontier technologies. Documents related to such technologies are not meant to remain in the public domain. The court also concluded that the employees failed to uphold their duty of not leaking business secrets. Two employees will spend two years in prison, while another has been fined KRW 100 million (around $78,461).
A few days ago, it was revealed that an ex-Samsung Electronics employee stole secrets related to the company's semiconductor chip manufacturing technology and then tried to use it to set up their own semiconductor chip manufacturing technology in China.
