Shopping malls are like battlefields. In the "business war", what is the ultimate weapon for enterprises to win? The answer is undoubtedly trade secrets. A trade secret infringement case handled by the Wuxi Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau has become a classic case exchanged at the Third Yangtze River Delta Regional Market Supervision and Law Enforcement Case Handling Cooperation Conference held recently.
The case spanned 4 years, with twists and turns, law enforcement personnel completed the work of collecting evidence and consolidating evidence in the case of "zero confessions", and in the face of "iron evidence", the infringer finally accepted the penalty and paid the fine in full. What kind of wisdom and competition is there? Yesterday (3rd), the reporter interviewed the law enforcement personnel of the Wuxi Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau to restore the beginning and end of this trade secret infringement case comparable to the "spy war drama" for you.
It starts with a whistleblower letter —
"Luring wolves into the house"?
Companies say trade secrets were stolen by collaborators
In October 2018, law enforcement officers received a whistleblower letter.
The whistleblower is a company in Huishan District. The company specializes in electroplating brass production line related business, covering research and development, production, sales and other links. Among them, there is a core series of technologies that the company has spent nearly 10 years of painstaking research and development results, mainly applied to the electroplating brass production line equipment produced by the company, which is the "trade secret" of the enterprise.
With this set of "secret weapons", the company has "opened up" in the industry market and successfully occupied a certain market share.
However, since 2016, the company has lost a lot of customers. The head of the company suspected that the company's trade secrets had been stolen. The object of suspicion is not a bystander, but a former partner- a company in Jiangyin.
It turned out that Lao Lin (pseudonym), who had served as deputy general manager of a company in Huishan, and Ah Fan (pseudonym), the actual person in charge of the actual operation of a company in Jiangyin, were "small". It is precisely because of this relationship that a company in Huishan will hand over the after-sales installation, commissioning and other business to a company in Jiangyin, how to expect to "attract wolves into the room" - during the cooperation period, a company in Huishan has repeatedly found that a company in Jiangyin has the suspicion of "digging the wall".
After the expiration of the cooperation period between the two sides, a company in Huishan no longer cooperated with a company in Jiangyin, but it was too late - soon, Lao Lin and a number of technical and production backbone employees successively "jumped" to a company in Jiangyin. Even several large customers in the past have interrupted business dealings with a company in Huishan for many years and have instead cooperated with a company in Jiangyin.
A company in Huishan believed that a certain company in Jiangyin had infringed on its trade secrets and caused economic losses to it, and requested law enforcement personnel to investigate and deal with it according to law.
Total denial, refusal to cooperate
The case twists and turns back to square one
After receiving the report, law enforcement officers quickly launched an investigation. Among them, whether the core technology advocated by the whistleblower is a "trade secret" is the focus of the preliminary investigation. To this end, law enforcement officers came to a company in Huishan to investigate the scene. After investigation, the technology involved in the case has not been announced to the public, and encryption protection measures have been taken during use, and have brought huge benefits to the company. Employees who have access to the technology have signed a "confidentiality agreement" and a "non-compete agreement" with them in the early stage.
After determining that the technology was a trade secret, law enforcement personnel immediately rushed to a company in Jiangyin, seized the core components and related drawings of the technology involved in the case, and found that Lao Lin, the former deputy general manager of a company in Huishan, and more than 10 former employees were working here in the company's production and operation site.
Despite this, during the investigation of the case, Lao Lin refused to admit to working in the company, arguing that he had come to "visit friends". The person in charge of a company in Jiangyin also completely denied the content of the report.
After appraisal by the forensic appraisal agency, the production drawings seized at the scene were consistent with the core technology drawings of a company in Huishan, and the technical information contained in the core components was the same as the technical secret claimed by the right holder. Since then, law enforcement officials have repeatedly notified the relevant person in charge of the company, Ah Fan, to be investigated, but the other party has ignored it, only arguing that the drawings were purchased from the "partner" and sent more than 600 drawings traded by the two sides to "prove innocence".
After screening and comparison, law enforcement officers found more than 20 drawings related to the technology involved in the case from more than 600 drawings and brought them to the "partners" for investigation and verification. But the other side said that the technology involved in these drawings "is not mastered by themselves."
After the lie was discovered, a company in Jiangyin still resisted, refused to admit infringement, and avoided law enforcement personnel and refused to cooperate with the investigation. At this time, the whistleblower submitted a professional audit situation statement, believing that the behavior of a company in Jiangyin caused the actual economic loss of more than 8 million yuan to the company.
According to the relevant laws and regulations of our country, the act of infringing on the trade secrets of others has caused losses of more than 500,000 yuan to others, and has been suspected of committing a crime. For this reason, the case was handed over to the public security organs for handling in accordance with the law.
After accepting the case, the public security organs repeatedly went to the product buyers involved in the case in Zhengzhou, Henan, Taizhou, Jiangsu and other places to investigate the field, and finally because the case did not meet the standards for criminal prosecution, the case was returned to the market supervision department for investigation.
In one conversation, key evidence emerges
The evidence "speaks", and the eavesdropper "zero confession" admits punishment
At this time, it has been nearly 1 and a half years since the market supervision department launched the investigation of this case. The case returned to the original point, and the difficulty did not diminish in the slightest - at this time, the reported person, a company in Jiangyin, refused to admit infringement, Lao Lin and other former employees of the right holders denied participating, and the third party involved in the procurement of the products involved also refused to cooperate in the "identity appraisal" investigation. How to prove that a company in Jiangyin has a "knowing or should have known" situation has become a difficult problem facing law enforcement personnel.
In order to find a new breakthrough, the law enforcement personnel of the Municipal Market Supervision Bureau decided to review the case and learn about the situation from the right holder again. During a casual conversation between the two sides, law enforcement officers inadvertently obtained a key clue that made the case come to light:
It turned out that in 2017, a company in Huishan realized that Lao Lin and other employees who could contact the trade secrets involved in the case had been taken to their company by a company in Jiangyin after work to "work part-time". In order to grasp the conclusive evidence, a certain company in Huishan secretly sent someone to track the chartered car, and when it was tracked near the factory, it was found by the personnel of a certain company in Jiangyin and detained and beaten, threatening and inducing him to "keep it secret" about the situation found in the tracking. After the tracker pretended to be "surrendered" and got out, he immediately reported the relevant situation to the company truthfully.
The day after the incident, a company in Huishan reported the case. Under the mediation of the public security organs, a company in Jiangyin compensated the tracker for economic losses such as medical expenses, and the two sides settled.
This mediation was "recorded" by the local public security organs, and part of its contents confirmed that a company in Jiangyin "knew or should have known" about the trade secret claimed by the right holder.
In addition, law enforcement officers collected a large amount of evidence in a company in Jiangyin, among which, in the company's roster, employee birthday benefit receipt records, travel reimbursement records, meeting records and other written materials, there are the signatures of former employees of more than 10 rights holders such as Lao Lin, plus the bank flow of relevant wage payments, etc., which proves that the above-mentioned personnel have a labor service relationship with a company in Jiangyin.
After all the evidence was fixed and a complete evidence chain was formed, the Wuxi Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau made an administrative punishment decision on the case at the beginning of this year: a company in Jiangyin obtained the trade secrets of the right holder by improper means, and its behavior violated the relevant provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and was fined 300,000 yuan in accordance with the law.
After receiving the penalty decision, a company in Jiangyin, which had never admitted infringement and refused to cooperate with the investigation, did not raise objections, paid the fine in full, and stopped the above-mentioned infringement locally. At this point, this trade secret infringement case, which lasted for more than two years, came to a successful end.
Case by case
The cost of violating the law has increased, and the protection has been increased
These subjects will also be held accountable for "stealing secrets"
According to law enforcement officials, since the implementation of the current Anti-Unfair Competition Law in 2018, the characterization and punishment provisions on trade secret infringement have been revised in April 2019, including electronic intrusion as one of the means of infringement, instigating, inducing and helping others to obtain trade secrets into the infringement of trade secrets, and including natural persons, legal persons and unincorporated organizations other than business operators into the subject of trade secret infringement. While raising the standard of compensation for infringement, it also raises the fine standard of administrative law enforcement departments for law enforcement of trade secret infringement. In September 2020, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security adjusted the standards for filing and prosecuting criminal cases of infringement of trade secrets, reducing the standard of prosecution from the amount of losses caused to rights holders or illegal gains from 500,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan. The intensive adjustment of the above-mentioned laws and regulations fully reflects the continuous increase in the protection of intellectual property rights such as trade secrets by the state.
Source: Jiangnan Evening News
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