Revision of Sentencing Guidelines for "Technology Leakage Crimes"... "Preventing Lenient Punishments"

Sentencing guidelines for trade secret infringement and other technology leakage crimes will be revised. Sentencing guidelines serve as a reference for judges when determining the sentence and whether to grant probation.

Status report on trial results related to police investigation technology leakage cases from 2016 to 2018. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

On the 13th, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office announced that at the 125th Sentencing Commission meeting held the previous day, sentencing guidelines for technology leakage crimes such as trade secret infringement were selected for revision.

The proposal for revising the sentencing guidelines for technology leakage crimes, submitted by the two agencies to the Supreme Court Sentencing Commission in April, was adopted.

Following the adoption of the proposal, the Sentencing Commission will revise the sentencing guidelines related to technology leakage crimes by April next year (within the term of the 9th Sentencing Commission).

The revision of sentencing guidelines for technology crimes has emerged as a necessary safeguard to protect the excellent technologies of domestic companies amid intensified technological hegemony competition centered on the United States and China.

This is in the context that lenient punishments make it difficult to prevent the leakage of superior domestic technologies overseas.

For example, according to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), there were a total of 93 cases of industrial technology leakage overseas detected between 2018 and 2022, with the estimated economic damage related to these cases reaching 25 trillion won.

Considering the cases that have not surfaced (undetected), the KIPO explains that the scale of damage caused by technology leakage is expected to be even greater.

On the other hand, compared to the ripple effects of technology leakage crimes, the punishments have been insufficient. In fact, among technology leakage cases sentenced between 2019 and 2022, only 10.6% (47 out of 445 cases) received prison sentences.

Moreover, the average sentence for trade secret overseas leakage crimes handed down last year was only 14.9 months, sparking controversy over lenient punishments. Although the statutory maximum penalty for overseas leakage of trade secrets is up to 15 years imprisonment, the actual punishment level was weak.

For the same reason, KIPO and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office have formed a consensus on the need to resolve lenient punishments for technology leakage crimes and have continuously cooperated to revise the sentencing guidelines.

They have concurrently promoted research projects to review plans for revising the sentencing guidelines and have continued discussions on cooperation measures for revising the guidelines with related agencies such as the NIS, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Ministry of SMEs and Startups, National Police Agency, and Korea Customs Service.

In particular, last month, the two agencies jointly held a "Technology Leakage Crime Sentencing Guidelines Seminar" to discuss improvement plans for sentencing guidelines considering the specificity of technology leakage crimes, methods for estimating the scale of damage caused by such crimes, and to cooperate in understanding recent trends in sentencing guideline revisions.

The roles of KIPO and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office were significant in the 9th Sentencing Commission's decision to revise the sentencing guidelines for technology leakage crimes for the first time in seven years.

The Sentencing Commission is expected to begin preparing detailed plans for revising the sentencing guidelines as early as the second half of this year. In this process, weighting and mitigating factors for sentencing and revisions to probation judgment criteria will be focused on to properly reflect the specificity of technology leakage crimes, which often involve first-time offenders and difficulties in estimating damage scale.

Additionally, to ensure that the enhanced statutory penalties for trade secret infringement crimes, strengthened in 2019, are reflected in litigation practice, plans to raise recommended sentencing levels are also expected to be discussed.

The revision draft will first be prepared by the Sentencing Commission through expert meetings, followed by a procedure to collect opinions from related ministries such as KIPO and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, and then be revised and supplemented.

Once the final draft is derived through these procedures and approved by the Sentencing Commission, the new sentencing guidelines will apply to cases filed after the effective date.

Lee In-sil, Commissioner of KIPO, said, "We welcome the Sentencing Commission's decision to recognize the seriousness of technology leakage crimes and to revise the sentencing guidelines. As the main agency for intellectual property and the authority responsible for the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act, KIPO will fully perform its role to ensure that appropriate sentencing guidelines for technology leakage crimes are established."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.