According to the Korea Times, a former employee of Seoul Semiconductor was sentenced to 8 months in prison and suspended for two years. Earlier, he was sentenced to disclose trade secrets about the company's LED technology.
Seoul Semiconductor said on Thursday that the employee obtained trade secrets while conducting research and sold them to the company's customers in violation of the Prevention of Industrial Technology Leakage and Protection Act.
"Since 2010, this employee has been a researcher in the process and new technology team for four years. After leaving the company, he intentionally sold the technology to the company's customers," an executive at Seoul Semiconductor said. The trade secret is a technology for improving the color coordination of LED products, which the government has designated as the national core technology. "
Seoul Semiconductor said that it is currently difficult to assess the economic losses caused. The research and development of the leaked technology took up to 32 months and invested 37.7 billion won.
Seoul Semiconductor is the largest LED manufacturer in South Korea with 14,000 patents. In the past two years, it has participated in 32 patent lawsuits in seven countries including the United States, China, Japan and Europe. In November 2019, the company won a patent lawsuit against Japanese lens maker Enplas' LED TV backlight technology.