Former Samsung Electronics VP Ahn Seung-ho also sentenced to 3 years in prison on appeal over leak of company secrets; taken into custody in court

[Financial News] Former Samsung Electronics IP Center head (vice president) Ahn Seung-ho, who was indicted on charges of leaking the company's confidential internal materials and filing a patent lawsuit in a U.S. court, was sentenced to prison and taken into custody in court in the appeals trial as well.
The Criminal Division 3 of the Seoul High Court, presided over by Judge Lee Seunghan, sentenced former Vice President Ahn to three years in prison on the 27th, the same sentence imposed at the first trial, after he was indicted on charges of violating the Act on Prevention of Unfair Competition and Protection of Trade Secrets (including disclosure of trade secrets). The court also revoked the bail granted at the first trial and ordered him taken into custody in court.
Lee Dong-ho, former head of the patent application group at Samsung Display Co., Ltd., who was indicted alongside Ahn, was sentenced on appeal to four years in prison and ordered to pay 532.61 million won in additional forfeiture, and was taken into custody in court. A former Samsung Electronics IP Center employee identified only as Lee, who was accused of handing confidential internal documents to Ahn, had the two-year prison sentence from the first trial overturned, was sentenced to three years in prison, and was taken into custody in court.
The appeal concerning a former in-house patent attorney identified only as Cho was dismissed, while the acquittal of a former Samsung employee identified only as Park was upheld, as at the first trial, because it had not been sufficiently proven that the leaked information constituted trade secrets.
Ahn served as head of Samsung Electronics' IP Center from 2010 to 2019, overseeing the company's global patent work. After leaving the company, he founded the patent management firm (NPE) SynergyIP. In 2021, he teamed up with Techiya, a company specializing in audio equipment, and filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over patents for wireless earbuds and audio recording devices.
Ahn is accused of obtaining confidential Samsung Electronics materials, including the "Techiya Current Issues Report," unlawfully through junior employees at the company and others, and then using them as ammunition in U.S. patent litigation. The documents contained core trade secrets, including technical evaluations and analyses, as well as Samsung's defensive arguments and negotiation strategies.
The first-trial court had ruled that the internal documents obtained by Ahn constituted trade secrets and sentenced him to three years in prison, but did not take him into custody in court at the time, citing reasons including the need to protect his right to mount a defense.
The appeals court also found the first-trial court's guilty verdict justified. In particular, it said, "The defendant worked for a long time as an executive overseeing intellectual property at a large company and, after leaving, leaked confidential internal materials that he was obligated to protect for personal gain," and "His methods and the nature of the offense are highly reprehensible, including filing a massive patent lawsuit against his former employer based on those materials." The court gave these as reasons for its sentencing decision.
Meanwhile, the patent infringement lawsuit Ahn had filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas based on the leaked confidential materials was also permanently dismissed after the improper acquisition of the materials was found to constitute interference with judicial proceedings.
[email protected] Chang-hun Lee Reporter