Posing as a middleman and owner to rob customers An employee of a company in Haikou was convicted of trade secret infringement

Source: Procuratorial Daily

Impersonate middlemen and owners to rob customers

Qiongshan, Haikou: An employee of a company was convicted of infringing trade secrets

After a public prosecution initiated by the Qiongshan District Procuratorate of Haikou City, Hainan Province, the Qiongshan District Court sentenced defendant Zhang Mou to 10 months' imprisonment, suspended for one year, and fined him 100,000 yuan for the crime of infringing trade secrets. Recently, Zhang paid the fine on time, and the case has been executed.

In May 2019, Mr. Zhang joined Hainan Jia Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Company A"), serving as the manager of the foreign trade department in the company, and was fully responsible for the company's foreign marketing business, including establishing contact with foreign customers, communicating to understand customer needs, and supplying according to orders. The labor contract signed by Mr. Zhang and Company A clearly stipulates that Mr. Zhang has the obligation to keep the company's trade secrets and intellectual property rights in accordance with the law. Zhang's confidentiality scope is: the company's technical process information, business information, source intelligence information, market channel (resource) information, company strategic information, financial information, etc.

In May 2020, Mr. Zhang registered and established Hainan B Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Company B") in the name of her husband Yang, and used the foreign customer information and other business information he mastered during his work in Company A to purchase 54,436 kilograms of the same "fish collagen peptide" products as Company A at a lower price from a chemical company in Hainan and a biotechnology company in Jiaxing, Zhejiang. Zhang deceived 4 foreign company customers of Company A: "Company B is a middleman, and 'fish collagen peptides' are Company A products. ”

After investigation, from May 2020 to December 2020, Company B exported about 54,406 kilograms of "fish collagen peptides" to foreign customers of Company A through Qingdao Customs, Shanghai Customs and Shenzhen Customs, and made illegal profits of more than 1.1 million yuan.

After appraisal, the names, addresses, contact information, business scope and other information of the four foreign companies involved in the case were not known to the public. On October 2, 2021, Mr. Yang signed a settlement agreement with the victim enterprise, and Mr. Yang compensated Company A with 800,000 yuan, and Company A expressed understanding for Mr. Zhang's behavior.

It is understood that the case involves infringement of trade secrets and the value of the case is high, and the facts of the case are complicated. In the early stage of case acceptance, the Qiongshan District Procuratorate dispatched professional backbones to form a professional case-handling team. In the course of handling cases, procurators handling cases put forward detailed and targeted supplementary investigation suggestions from areas such as criminal facts, evidence collection, and case characterization, and guide public security organs to collect and collect more than 10 items of evidence. At the same time, the procurator visited Company A many times, listened to expert opinions, and accurately determined the amount of losses in the infringement of trade secrets involved in the case. Zhang pleaded guilty and accepted punishment at the stage of reviewing and prosecuting, and signed an affidavit of guilt and acceptance of punishment in the presence of a lawyer.

The court held that Zhang X violated the rights holder's requirements for keeping trade secrets, used the trade secrets in his possession, caused heavy losses to the right holder of the trade secrets, and illegally profited more than 1.1 million yuan, and his behavior has constituted the crime of infringing trade secrets, considering that Zhang X truthfully confessed the crime after arriving at the case, voluntarily admitted guilt and accepted punishment, and his family has compensated the victim for 800,000 yuan of losses, and obtained the victim's forgiveness, and may be given a lenient punishment as appropriate, so the above judgment was made.