[Criminal Litigation] Defended Company A (Defendant) in a case of alleged trade secret violation, resulting in a full "no charges" decision. Law firm Veat

Law firm Veat (hereinafter “Veat”) received a no-charges finding for both its employees and the company in A’s ‘alleged trade secret infringement case.’

A completed a system construction project for B based on its self-developed IT system, and subsequently filed a lawsuit against A for trade secret infringement while performing IT system construction for C.

Veat meticulously analyzed the details of the lawsuit and, based on numerous marathon meetings with A’s representatives and a large volume of documentation, analyzed the following aspects: ▲A’s IT system development history, ▲the status of the IT system industry, ▲the contract terms between A and B, particularly the ownership and copyright attribution of deliverables, ▲B’s efforts to protect trade secrets, ▲the circumstances surrounding the contract with C and the development history of the IT system, ▲A’s efforts to prevent trade secret infringement, and ▲the background for B’s filing of the lawsuit. As a result, Veat concluded that B’s claims ignored the core content of the service contract and fundamentally misinterpreted basic facts.

Based on this, Veat argued and substantiated that A’s employees had not instructed or needed to leak trade secrets, that A is a professional company with a long history of developing IT systems, that A also had the right to use intermediate deliverables under the contract with B, that B has not paid most of the service fees, that A used previously developed source code as a basis for the project for C, supplementing it with new development, and that A had made efforts to prevent trade secret infringement.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office accepted all of the facts argued and proven by Veat and issued a no-charges finding for both A’s employees and A.

Veat provides specialized legal advice on trade secret and unfair competition prevention cases, staffed with attorneys with degrees in engineering and sciences and attorneys who have handled numerous advisory cases. If you require legal advice related to trade secrets, please contact partner attorney Song Do-young, representative attorney Choi Sung-ho, or partner attorney Jo Eun-byeol via the contact information below.

Thank you.

Law firm Veat