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사진 확대 Changsin Memory (CXMT) logo [SHINHWA Yonhap News]
I had no intention of developing my own technology from the beginning. There were no laboratories, no facilities.”
This is the testimony that a defendant who worked for Samsung Electronics for 28 years recently gave in court. It is the first confession made by the person concerned. He was accused of leaking Samsung-born personnel and DRAM technology to China when the CXMT was established in 2016. CXMT, which was established in this way, has become China’s largest DRAM company and No. 1 in market capitalization in 10 years.
The significance of this testimony is not to send one defendant to prison. If the court admits the testimony as true, it will officially remain in the South Korean ruling on what path CXMT took over Samsung technology.
Once engraved in the judgment, it exerts power across borders. An example is a dispute over OLED trade secrets between Samsung Display and China’s BOE. Samsung submitted a Supreme Court ruling to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that found its employees guilty of technology leakage. Based on this, the ITC recognized BOE’s infringement of trade secrets and recommended a ban on imports for 14 years and 8 months. In the end, BOE reportedly paid around 1 trillion won in the name of patent fees. In other words, the investigation and trial of technology leakage have become weapons that have brought Chinese companies to the negotiating table.
The CXMT case is no different. If the circumstances of the systematic technology takeover remain in the judgment, this will be a card that Samsung will take out of international disputes in the future. The prosecution’s persistent investigation, which did not stop at catching a few criminals, became the last bastion of the stolen technology.
The line of defense will shake significantly as of October 2. This is because the prosecution, which has accumulated technology leakage investigation capabilities, has closed its doors and the Serious Crime Agency has taken its place, putting prosecutors and professional investigators with long know-how on the verge of dispersing. The prosecutor’s right to command the investigation into special judicial police officers will also disappear. The scene appealed for the need for the command of a legal expert, but it was not accepted.
Technological hegemony is not observed only in the laboratory. Finding stolen technology, proving it in court, and holding it accountable abroad with its records—this link is also a mainstay of technology protection. Let’s hope the law makers don’t turn a blind eye to this fact.
사진 확대 Kim Min-so, social affairs reporter
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CXMT
Technology Leakage
Trade Secrets
Changsin Memory
Yonhap News
28 Years
Samsung Electronics